Emma Vu was asleep in seat 18B aboard Flight 1282 when the Boeing 737-9 MAX with 171 passengers and six crew suddenly dropped after a chunk of its fuselage blew off at about 16,000 feet and left a gaping hole.
“The masks r down. I am so scared right now,” Vu wrote to her parents in texts she posted in a TikTok video, where she is seen wearing an oxygen mask during the ordeal Friday on the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.
“Please pray for me. Please i dont want to die,” she wrote.
Vu told CNN it was “very scary” and “very surreal.”
“I woke up to the plane just falling and I knew it was not just normal turbulence because the masks came down, and that’s when the panic definitely started to set it,” she recalled.
“You just think it’s never going to happen to you — and then it literally did happen to me.”
She said she wanted to thank the passengers near her and a flight attendant for trying to keep her calm.
“I am so grateful for the two ladies who sat to either side of me,” Vu told the news outlet. “They were rubbing my back, giving me comfort.”
In another post, Vu further described how the harrowing events unfolded.
“I fell asleep and then we’re probably 20 minutes into the air and I feel the entire plane drop and the masks drop and people are screaming in a moment of vulnerability,” she says.
Vu said the flight attendants were handing out oxygen tanks to passengers who needed them.
“I was freaking out because my bag wouldn’t inflate and that’s literally what they tell you in the safety thing — like don’t worry you’re still getting airflow, but (during) fight or flight you’re not thinking about that … it was just so scary,” she says in the video.
“The pilot came on and told everyone to put your mask on before you help others, like literally word for word what you hear in the safety briefing. It was just so surreal,” Vu said.
“I was freaking out because my bag wouldn’t inflate and that’s literally what they tell you in the safety thing — like don’t worry you’re still getting airflow, but (during) fight or flight you’re not thinking about that … it was just so scary,” she says in the video.
She told CNN that the airline had sent an apology email to passengers and promised to reimburse the cost of the ticket while also offering an additional $1,500 payment for “any inconvenience.”
“All I got was free snacks and a compensated flight with more legroom,” Vu said in her video, adding that Alaska Airlines should pay for therapy.
“I don’t know, I just feel like reimbursed flight with more legroom and free water and snacks is not enough,” she added.
Meanwhile, another passenger also said she was afraid the plane was going to crash.
“We literally thought we were going to die,” Sreysoar Un, who was on the flight with her 12-year-old son Josiah McCaul, told the Wall Street Journal.
Josiah said he saw his phone and a teddy bear his grandmother from Cambodia had given him fly out the hole, which was one row ahead of theirs.
The boy held his mom’s hand but could not speak with her because they had their oxygen masks on as the cabin was swept with freezing air, according to the news outlet.