Alaska Airlines passenger shares terrifying story onboard
Passenger Vicki Kreps describes her experience with her two grandchildren on a chaotic Alaska Airlines flight and their resilience after a door blew off.
Passengers on a California-bound Alaska Airlines flight were met with horror after a door blew off the Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane shortly after take off.
One traveler, who was on board the flight with her two grandchildren, shared her experience on "America Reports," Monday.
"I knew there was a sense of a boom. I don't know if I felt that or heard it," Vicki Kreps said.
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"There was like a mist in the air immediately following. My brain was processing it as smoke, and so I kind of lowered my mask slightly to smell and to look around. And that's when, over my left shoulder, I could see that there was a hole in the plane."
During a flight on Friday, the plug door panel on an Alaskan Airlines flight flew off the California-bound aircraft at approximately 16,000 feet as it climbed to cruising altitude after departing from Portland, Oregon.
"I sort of hear a swishing above me, my brain processed as above me, which I think may have been depressurization. Then my body is sort of thrown forward, back again with a gust of wind. The oxygen masks fall, and, the pilot is on saying, 'this is an emergency. We've experienced decompression.' And he told us, ‘get your own mask on first before helping others,’" Kreps said.
Kreps and her two young grandchildren were sitting in row 19, and the door plug blew out near row 26.
"So once kids were masked and settled in, and I took their hands, we did say a prayer, that if we were going to meet Jesus today, that we knew we were going to be safely in his arms," Kreps added.
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With the cabin depressurized, the flight returned to Portland with no serious injuries reported onboard.
After the ordeal, Kreps' two grandchildren shared their thoughts in a video.
"Were you scared?" Kreps asked.
"I was scared," the younger one said.
"I was half scared," the older replied, even adding he was a "pro" at following the flight crew's instructions.
The incident is the latest involving the Boeing 737 MAX, which plays a critical role for the company but has been hit by a number of setbacks since it was introduced as the successor to the 737 Next Generation six and a half years ago.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two U.S. air carriers that use the 737 MAX 9, grounded their fleets to inspect their aircraft while the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board carried out an investigation into the incident which resulted in hundreds of flights getting canceled. The MAX 9 involved in the incident had been restricted from long flights over water, such as to Hawaii, after Alaska reported pressurization alerts on prior flights.
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"I would have rather not have experienced what I experienced," Kreps told Fox News. "I was so grateful to the crew and to everyone that cared for us while we were on the plane and experiencing, getting us back on the ground as quickly as they possibly could. That time passed very quickly, and we were back on the ground."
Fox News' Taylor Penley and FOX Business' Eric Revell contributed to this report.
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