r/interestingasfuck • u/dgusn • 20h ago
This is Aloha Airlines Flight 243 after a large section of its roof tore away at 24,000 feet. During the explosive decompression, a flight attendant was swept out of the aircraft and was never found. Remarkably, the pilots still managed to land the plane safely, and 94 of the 95 occupants survived.
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u/casual_creator 19h ago
That poor woman. I can’t imagine what must have been going through her mind. I can only hope that the sudden decompression and speed/force of her exit from the plane rendered her unconscious for her final moments.
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u/Holiday-Tradition343 19h ago
The large bloodstain right over top of the existing window tells a story. She probably didn’t feel anything.
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u/Minimum_Contributor 18h ago
Look the dude with the blue shirt…
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u/sarahelizaf 16h ago
I looked it up. She was standing on the fifth row from the front. That would be his row.
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u/SirRabbott 11h ago
What about the teenager wearing a life jacket staring straight at the camera with an entire side of their head covered with blood? Or the.. old lady? Who looks passed out absolutely covered.
“Flight attendant was never found” wdym she’s all over the fkin place ☠️
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u/Impressive-Egg-7444 9h ago
Those people likely have their own injuries, everyone would have been rocked by sudden pressure/speed change
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u/CocoMilhonez 16h ago edited 16h ago
About
2030 years back, a Fokker 100 plane had a similar incident (albeit less extensive) after a bomb went off shortly after take-off at about 8000 ft and one passenger was blown out. It was all so sudden that the crew only realized someone was missing during a head count after landing. The coroner's examination suggests he was conscious during the fall.The flight was between two cities less than 100 km apart by road, imagine how unlucky that must have felt.
Edit: I mean, the 90s was, like, 10 years ago, right?
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u/ScissorFight42069 14h ago
It takes 70-90 seconds to hit ground from that height. If she was conscious, she had some time to think before she hit.
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u/CarpetReady8739 19h ago
My flight was delayed landing in Honolulu that afternoon because of this incident; we had no idea what was going on, they wouldn't tell us anything; we thought maybe it was a bomb scare. It was a very strange day and sad for the attendant.
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u/T-Marie-N 16h ago
We lived in Hawaii at the time. It was horrifying. I've thought of that flight attendant over the years since and hoped she was unconscious for that fall.
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u/dgusn 20h ago
Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a Boeing 737-200 flying between Hilo and Honolulu, Hawaii, on April 28, 1988. About 23 minutes after takeoff, while cruising at approximately 24,000 feet, an explosive decompression ripped away a large section of the aircraft's roof, exposing the cabin to the open sky.
The sudden loss of pressure created hurricane-force winds inside the cabin. Passengers and crew were battered by flying debris, and oxygen masks deployed as the aircraft rapidly descended. Flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing, who was standing in the aisle when the fuselage ruptured, was swept out of the aircraft and was never found.
Despite severe structural damage, the cockpit remained attached to the aircraft, allowing Captain Robert Schornstheimer and First Officer Madeline "Mimi" Tompkins to maintain control. They successfully made an emergency landing at Kahului Airport on Maui just 13 minutes after the rupture.
Of the 95 people aboard, 94 survived. The investigation by the NTSB determined that the accident was caused by metal fatigue and widespread corrosion, worsened by the aircraft's age and the frequent short flights between the Hawaiian Islands, which subjected the fuselage to an unusually high number of pressurization cycles.
The accident became one of the most important case studies in aviation safety, leading to stricter aircraft inspection and maintenance procedures worldwide. It also remains one of the most extraordinary examples of pilots successfully landing an aircraft after catastrophic structural failure.
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u/Wolfie81 17h ago
THIRTEEN MINUTES. That must have felt like forever to those folks strapped into a now drop-top airplane, wondering if every second might be their last.
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u/awomanphenomenally 16h ago
I am surprised no one sustained severe frostbite.
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u/Wolfie81 14h ago
Well now that you've mentioned it, I had to go do a little "research" on that idea...
At 24,000 feet over Hawaii in late April, the outside air temperature would have been approximately -22°F to -26°F (-30°C to -32°C).
While the conditions at 24,000 feet were easily cold enough to cause frostbite, two critical factors prevented it:
The Rapid Emergency Descent: Immediately following the decompression, Captain Schornstheimer initiated a maximum-rate emergency dive. The pilots dropped the aircraft from 24,000 feet down to 10,000 feet in just a few minutes, rapidly entering much warmer, denser air.
Short Total Exposure Time: The entire ordeal—from the moment the roof ripped open to the wheels touching down at Kahului Airport in Maui—lasted only 13 minutes. The actual exposure to sub-zero temperatures lasted only a fraction of that time during the initial descent.
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u/RetPala 14h ago
maximum-rate emergency dive
Goddamn, imagine the drop from Splash Mountain but it lasts for "a few minutes"
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u/VirtualSea2647 14h ago
You only feel the “weightlessness” initiating the dive. Once established in that decent and your fpm remains constant, you would feel back to normal, even descending as fast as 10,000fpm.
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u/awomanphenomenally 13h ago edited 36m ago
Thank you SO much for looking into this. I read portions of NTSB report related to injuries and noted that no frostbite was mentioned. Now I know why!
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u/sl33ksnypr 8h ago
To add to your comment, the air is thinner. So in theory, the amount of heat it can pull away from your body would be less than sea level. Similar to how 70°F feels great when you're standing outside, but 70°F water feels really cold. Less extreme of course because we're comparing normal air to less dense air, but similar concept.
Anecdote: Last time I went to Arizona, we drove up a mountain there. I think the elevation was 9-10k feet. I was wearing a t shirt and sweat pants because it was about 70°F when we started driving up. When we got to the top, it was right around 30°F and there was snow all over the place, but it felt pretty comfortable outside. Granted, I'm from the Midwest so 50° feels nice, but I didn't feel the need to put a hoodie on while people were actively skiing 500' away. The sun was also out, which probably played a part.
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u/awomanphenomenally 16h ago
It’s also worth noting that eight other people, including one flight attendant, suffered serious injuries; 57 passengers suffered minor injuries.
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u/freebirth 19h ago
the loss of pressure did not create hurricane force winds.. the plane flying at the speed of a hurricane caused hurricane force winds. there is a higher pressure difference between your coke and the atmosphere than the plane and the stmosphere. but soda cans dont explode when you open them and force all of their contents out all at once at "hurricane force" do they?
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u/No_Hovercraft_439 19h ago
That’d be a helluva hurricane. A 737 traveling at that altitude be doing 460mph.
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u/Dominus-Temporis 19h ago
I guess the Saffir–Simpson scale doesn't go any higher that Category 5 (=>157 mph), but I think if we ever did have a 460mph hurricane, we'd need a new Category.
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u/Mercinator-87 19h ago
Then you got yourself a hypercane
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u/Tayjocoo 19h ago
We actually wouldn’t need a new category because the conditions to sustain a 460mph hurricane would mean humans are very, very dead.
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u/OverTheSquatch 18h ago
Well hurricanes spawn tornadoes, but even the fastest tornadoes are near 300. So still a little slow.
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u/Reincarnatedpotatoes 17h ago
And those are spawned by Supercells, not hurricanes. Hurricane spawned tornadoes are usually weaker, EF3 or lower.
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u/OverTheSquatch 17h ago
Thank you for further clarification. I didn’t even think to check the difference in strength between supercell spawned and hurricane spawned.
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u/accidentallyHelpful 15h ago
Use the Fujita scale instead
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u/freebirth 19h ago
yeah im not familiar enough with the event to know how fast the thing was going at the time.
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u/Pete_Iredale 18h ago
Exactly. She didn't get sucked out, she got blown out.
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u/Therailwaykat_1980 15h ago
Well, really, didn’t she stay still but the plane kept going? I imagine she then followed a pretty vertical line back to earth. No sucking or blowing required.
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u/froggertthewise 14h ago
Well it's both.
Initially only a small hole opened up in the fuselage. Due to the pressure difference the air in the cabin rushed out through that one hole. This happens at the speed of sound. This created enough suction to suck the flight attendant through the hole, but she got stuck and blocked it. Due to this blockage the air rushing towards the hole suddenly had nowhere to go and created a pressure spike, like closing a valve in a water pipe too fast. This spike caused the explosive decompression and the damage you see.
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u/IcyAd5518 13h ago
So she did the thing where Bugs Bunny puts his finger in the barrel and makes the gun explode in Elmer Fudd's face. Consummate entertainer right there. And over there. And some over there too...
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u/_YouAreTheWorstBurr_ 15h ago
Thank you. It's aggravating how this idea of explosive decompression in planes will just suck everything out keeps getting perpetuated.
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u/-Mx-Life- 17h ago
If I recall correctly, the front leading edge of rivets failed on the top of the tube is what allowed the decompression and roof peeling to occur.
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u/MightyBlunder 16h ago
What happened to the single passenger that didn't survive?
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u/GingerIsTheBestSpice 16h ago
It was the flight attendant, not a passenger. 95 people on board including the pilots and attendants.
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u/nomnomsquirrel 16h ago
She was standing near the front of the cabin doing her flight attendant duties when the top peeled off.
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u/Narrow_Possession348 20h ago
Annnd this is why you keep your seatbelt on!
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u/facw00 17h ago
Given the level of car seatbelt use at the time, I would be surprised to learn that most passengers were belted. Makes survival that much more impressive, especially for people in the open.
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u/dudestir127 15h ago
Hilo to Honolulu, what the flight was scheduled to do, isn't a very long flight. You're in the air for a little over a half hour. I take the flight sometimes on Hawaiian, living in Honolulu and sometimes going to check out the eruption at Kilauea.
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u/CocoMilhonez 17h ago
Acktchually, it's for much more mundane and trivial reasons than the half the fuselage blowing away. Even small turbulence can make the place jolt a meter or three very quickly and send passengers into the air. People have broken bones and gotten concussions because of that.
Of course, not getting blown out of the plane if the fuselage does happen to break is also important.
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u/Legionof1 13h ago
Probably wouldn’t have sucked anyone out that was seated and unbelted. To get pushed out in a situation like this you need to be between the air and the decompression. Just being seated means there is no significant air along your back or butt to push you out. It also removes the majority of the surface area that the other air can act on since your side profile is significantly slimmer and more stable than your front to back profile.
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u/cellardoormaker 19h ago
I’m a pilot and sometimes we are chatting about some issue or another that we have faced in our career and every now and then you hear someone explain what they did to solve this random problem that didn’t have a checklist. Someone will then say something like, “good job, sometimes you just have to be a pilot.. there is no “Roof Comes Off Aircraft” checklist to follow”.
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u/western_style_hj 19h ago
The TV movie they made about this terrified little me
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u/Diznaster 18h ago
I still remember there was a person with a strip of debris that looked like it was stapled to their face.
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u/phosphite 16h ago
Yeah that guy had metal debris glued to his bloody face the whole movie. What a fine lad.
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u/velolove42 18h ago
Yes I remember watching it at a friend's house in elementary school....scared the crap out of me!
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u/Drum_Eatenton 18h ago
I watched that shit right before flying for the first time as a little kid with anxiety.
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u/TheCervus 16h ago
Same. I had nightmares and I still have anxiety any time I get on a plane. I can't have a window seat.
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u/Alternative_Loquat61 17h ago
I wouldn’t sit in a window seat until I was well into my 30s because of this movie.
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u/Small-Stop7966 17h ago
Seriously, a woman working at my institution was on that plane. She did a depression and never came back to work. Very dramatic experience.
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u/Gentleman_Nosferatu 19h ago
From where did the masks appear with no roof?
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u/MackTuesday 18h ago
I'm imagining that big piece of roof flying off, and its masks popping out while it's falling
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u/Dy3_1awn 19h ago
Obviously those people did not get masks lol. The incident happened at 24000 feet, which is definitely in the zone of needing masks but I would assume the pilots lowered altitude quickly enough for the first class passengers to not sustain any lethal effects of oxygen deprivation. It doesn’t specify if the one death was the flight attendant or another passenger who wasn’t sucked out but it’s possible the one fatality was due to lack of oxygen.
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u/scroogesscrotum 19h ago
I think it specified enough that the one death was the flight attendant. Unless you really believe they no longer counted her as an occupant which would be pretty messed up imo.
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u/Islanduniverse 19h ago
Are you suggesting the woman who was sucked out and never found wasn’t counted as the death?
I think the whole “never found” part suggests that it was her who died.
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u/kungpowgoat 19h ago
That makes sense actually. Airline pilots are trained for almost any type of scenario imaginable including where they must lower altitude as fast and safe as possible. 1-3k feet off the ground and with low enough speed probably made the rest of the flight highly miserable yet tolerable for those fully exposed to the open air.
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u/itsethanty 19h ago
To clarify you think the woman who was sucked out a plane then fell 20000 feet into the ocean survived? It absolutely does specify, your reading comprehension needs work.
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u/NotPromKing 19h ago
I'm intrigued that people are wearing life jackets, because I really have difficulty envisioning the air being calm enough to find and put on the life jacket.
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u/CocoMilhonez 16h ago
They had quite a bit of time to think about what to do. After the initial shock, I'd look for a life jacket or anything that would give me even the slightest sense of security too.
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u/Straight-Treacle-630 19h ago
My father, a USCG SAR pilot: always book a seat over the wing; safest, structurally. This cut it too close for “comfort”. I thankfully can’t fathom the trauma involved. Jets aren’t meant to be convertibles.
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u/khalamar 19h ago
The top fell off. That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
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u/operablesocks 19h ago
There are regulations governing the materials they can be made of. Cardboard’s out. And no cardboard derivatives.
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u/FlounderBegonia 17h ago
I flew Aloha as a child two weeks after this event and vividly remember my older sister describing it to me as we boarded
They placated me with that Aloha Punch Jungle Juice with the peel top
But dudes…is there ANYTHING worse than older sisters?
I mean…anything worse except something like this?
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u/PayPsychological9347 19h ago
I recall the L.A. Times, ever cautious and neutral, reported the flight attendant as " missing", at 24,000 ft. " Missing"?
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u/Some1-Somewhere 13h ago
There are a handful of people who've been ejected from aircraft at altitude and survived. Rare, but not unheard of.
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u/BennyJams 19h ago
They made a TV movie out of this which I saw as a child and likely scarred me for life
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u/jackrabbit323 19h ago
Was the overhead luggage ever found?
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u/megster_walsh 13h ago edited 13h ago
No. The decompression occurred over the ocean, and neither the missing flight attendant or missing components were ever found.
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u/bitchcoin5000 17h ago
Based on what's Left of the airframe I can't believe it didn't just snap in half
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u/Silly_Concept7942 18h ago
I was 10 when this happened and watched the made for tv movie about it which created a very big fear of flying for me. In my twenties I had the opportunity to go to Hawaii for free and I said no because of this incident. Luckily I changed my mind and went, got upgraded to first class on each leg of the trip and it was the best experience of my life.
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u/Woompa78 18h ago
I still don’t understand how it didn’t buckle as soon as the front landing gear hit the ground.
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u/railker 17h ago
Couldn't find a good image of it, but there's a keel beam like a ship's that runs down the length of the aircraft on the bottom side of the fuselage and would've been a big part in keeping that structural integrity. If you see pictures of the landing gear bay with that big square beam running down the middle with some hydraulic components on top of it, I'm pretty sure that's it.
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u/Woompa78 16h ago
I had no idea about the beams. Always assumed the intact cylinder shape is what kept it from flexing/buckling.
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u/EggsceIlent 13h ago
Nah the skin is super thin and really doesn't provide the structual rigidity or anything, it just streamlines the aircraft more for aerodynamics.
The "keel beam" y'all are discussing (the aircrafts spine if you will),the wing box(center of plane and majority of support and structure for wings and everything else), and many, many "ribs" throughout the plane and wings make up what is actually the plane and it's structural components.
If you look around on Google images for aircraft that are scrapped and you'll find a shot of the skin of the plane it's crazy to see how thin it actually is and that it's all that seperates you from outside the aircraft.
Aluminum is amazing. Aircraft grade aluminum is even more so.
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u/OdysseusRex69 18h ago
Geez that must've been terrifying... Hoping the stewardess passed out soon during free fall so she didn't have to suffer the whole time.
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u/real_picklejuice 14h ago
I can only imagine the relief these people felt once back on the ground. Idk how you’d ever fly again
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u/ShameNap 8h ago
I know a guy who was on that flight. He doesn’t talk about it much but said it changed his outlook on life.
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u/ash-leg2 18h ago
Her name, Clarabelle Lansing, should be in the title. A person with a life, not simply "a flight attendant".
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u/dgusn 18h ago
I mentioned her in the more detailed comment I shared. May she rest in peace.
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u/JonNordland 11h ago
Ignore virtue signalers. They look for any opportunity to broadcast that they are morally superior to you by finding any way to point out where you are insensitive and so forth.
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u/milleribsen 18h ago
Yeah this is what I needed to be reminded of less than a week out from flying first class. Thankfully I'm medicated for anxiety now.
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u/CarbonReflections 18h ago
On a scale of 1 to shoot yourself how much ptsd do you think the passengers had where the opening is?
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u/redbrick01 16h ago
yeah, you fall in the middle of the ocean and no one saw where you landed...no one's gonna find you.
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u/Downtown_Many8020 12h ago
Imagine if this image popped up on the screen during the safety briefing before takeoff to remind you to keep your seatbelt on during the flight.
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u/ImpressiveExtreme696 12h ago
Suddenly those stupid-ass dinky little seatbelts seem substantially less stupid…. Flight attendants won’t need to remind me to buckle ever again after reading this
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u/Holiday-Tradition343 9h ago
It’s worth mentioning that this particular 737 was found after the incident to have the second highest number of flight cycles of 737s worldwide, surpassed only by an Aloha sister ship - nearly 100,000 cycles, and this on a plane that had yet to reach its 20th birthday. They were being flown an average of 10-12 cycles every day, given their use as island-hoppers - and it was being done in a relatively warm, salt-rich environment.
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u/oboshoe 5h ago
The landing with the roof off gets the most attention but there was more
They also experienced an engine failure on approach, the oxygen mask system mostly didn't work, and the landing gear "down and locked" failed to illuminate because one bulb was burned out.
The pilots landed unsure if they had landing gear and on one engine and a missing roof.
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u/therealsix 19h ago
They just glaze over the Flight Attendant huh? Didn’t find her…anyways, hurricane winds.
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u/DangerBay2015 19h ago
The fact the rest of the plane stayed intact well enough to allow it to land is fucking insane to me.
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u/SmallRocks 18h ago
I remember seeing a Lifetime-esque movie about this years ago.
Also, that dude in the back had his pant leg ripped off.
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u/TheShadowCat 18h ago
This flight is why airlines regularly check their aircraft for metal fatigue.
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u/jxj24 17h ago
It was my understanding that they followed the recommended inspection schedules, but this airframe was unexpectedly corroded, probably from spending so much time in a humid ground environment. But my memory of this is almost 40 years old.
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u/TheShadowCat 17h ago
My memory is that the main cause was because this airline flies lots of short trips in Hawaii, which caused far more stress due to all the landings. All those landings caused micro tears in the fuselage. Eventually those tears connected mid flight and the roof tore off.
The metal fatigue test I'm talking about uses a special computer and stylist, along with little dots on the aircraft. A mechanic will take the stylist and connect the dots. The computer can then tell if the plane has micro tears in the aluminium. This test can be done right at the gate.
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u/QuarterlyTurtle 16h ago
You’re correct it was the quick flights that sped up the metal fatigue, but it wasn’t the landings, it was repeated pressurization and depressurizations of the cabin.
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u/exqueezemenow 17h ago
I wonder if passengers lost consciousness until they got to a lower altitude.
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u/Conscious_Exchange82 16h ago
I remember seeing some Lifetime type movie about this in the 90s. Does anyone else remember that?? It was sort of troubling to watch as a child.
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u/burn3edoutburn3r 16h ago
Vividly. I don't remember how old I was. Born in 82. I loved it. It was a really intense story. But iirc, in the movie the flight attendant was hit in the neck with shrapnel or something. I can't remember exactly but I don't think she went out the window. I was little though. I could be wrong.
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u/TheWarDoctor 16h ago
Does anyone else have a memory of hearing a news report that the cause of the cabin breaking apart was due to the acid from all the pineapples people would take home degrading the metal? Obviously horse shit but I remember that for some reason.
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u/strange_invader 16h ago
This was an inter island flight so that would even hold up as a bs theory. It was the constant rapid compression and decompression from flying short trips between the islands that exacerbated the metal fatigue
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u/TADthePaperMaker 15h ago
This was the inspiration for the name of Vampire Weekend’s album, “Only God was Above Us”.
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u/Sea-Echo-7431 15h ago
How's this not a movie?
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u/LeoSolaris 14h ago
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u/bardia_afk 12h ago
Do you just, you know… chill after a while? like yeah it’s windy but it’s been 20 minutes and I’m still hanging pretty tight
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u/VoidowS 12h ago
So explain to me again why a roof of a plane can't shoot of in a emergency and we humans get shot out of the plane parachuting down? Why do we get watervests, and tell us to put our head between our knees? In a plane? Might as well give parachutes to boat users?!?
Wouldn't you rather take the chances then wait it out?
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u/poutyJess 5h ago
I think I remember they made a TV movie about this. I was fairly young when I saw it but I think about it at least twice a year.
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u/The-Young-Lion 19h ago edited 18h ago
OGWAU
Only God Was Above Us
Edit: Not sure why I am being downvoted. “Only God Was Above Us” was a famous quote from one of the passengers on the flight, and was later the title of an album by Vampire Weekend.
“The infamous "Only God was above us" headline was published on the front page of the May 1, 1988, New York Daily News. It quoted a panicked passenger from Aloha Airlines Flight 243, which experienced a massive structural failure that ripped the roof off mid-flight at 24,000 feet.”
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u/JudgmentFragrant2691 17h ago
This is the single reason why you should always fasten your seatbelt when seated
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u/EggsceIlent 13h ago
Well that and turbulence can absolutely mike tyson your ass.
And yes, I mean both
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u/HowsYaSistasAss 19h ago
As an atheist I truly believe that if I were one of those 94 passengers i would walk off that plane believing in god
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u/Pete_Iredale 18h ago
Here's the problem with that, which god/gods would you credit with saving you?
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u/didimao0072000 17h ago
a benevolent god wouldn't put people in that horrific incident in the first place.
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u/Forsaken_Republic_98 19h ago
I remember this! the faces of the people looked like they went thru hell! And except for one flight attendant they they all survived!
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u/Multicultural_Potato 19h ago
Damn sucks for the flight attendant and her family but that’s a miracle no one else died