Air passengers' mid-flight terror as hole is blown in Qantas 747 fuselage

[Richard]

Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney

Passengers on a London to Melbourne flight have described their terror after a faulty door "popped" in midair blowing a hole in the fuselage.

Qantas flight QF30, with 300 passengers and crew on board, plunged 20,000ft after the faulty door caused an "explosive" depressurisation.

The Boeing 747 had just taken off from a stopover in Hong Kong when the incident happened. As the plane dropped from 30,000ft to 10,000ft, oxygen masks fell from the ceiling.

Debra Manchester, a passenger in first class, said there was a "huge bang" and a "massive rush of wind," with debris swirling around the cabin. Mrs Manchester, a housewife from Buckinghamshire, said there was an atmosphere of chaos as passengers struggled to put their oxygen masks on.

"Newspapers and what looked like part of the ceiling flew past me. We didn't know what was happening to the plane. After a while things calmed down and there was a deadly silence. There was still debris all around our feet but we all started to feel a bit safer when we could take our masks off," she said.

Brendan McClements, an Australian businessman, said that when the passengers disembarked, they could see a large hole in the side of the plane on the "driver's side" - or right hand side of the fuselage. "We could see it from where we were standing and you could see straight through into the hold of the plane," he said.

Mrs Manchester added that luggage was "hanging out" of the hole where the hold had been, and that the emergency door above appeared to have come loose.

The passengers praised the actions of the pilot and crew. Mr McClements, 45, said: "The crew were terrific, they were really good, they kept everyone calm and told people what to do and helped people with their masks and things. Their reactions had a very calm effect on the other passengers.

"When the crew came off everyone applauded and when the pilot came off he got a round of applause too.

"The pilot said to us: ‘Look, we don’t really know what happened. There is a hole in the side of the plane and the cabin depressurised so we had to come down.’”

Mrs Manchester claimed that 20 minutes after the plane first took off from Heathrow, she heard a loud bang near the faulty door. "You have to wonder if that explosion could have caused the second one," she said.

Ding Lima, Manila airport operations officer, said: “Upon disembarkation, there were some passengers who vomited. You can see in their faces that they were really scared.”

Octavio Lina, the airport's deputy manager for operations, said the cabin’s floor gave way, exposing some of the cargo beneath and part of the ceiling collapsed. “There is a big hole on the right side near the wing,” he said, adding it was 2.5 to 3 yards (metres) in diameter.

Qantas is still trying to establish how the large hole came to appear in the fuselage. An emergency room has been set up at the airline's head office at Mascot airport in Sydney, where senior airline executives are being briefed by aircraft engineers.

A Qantas spokeswoman said: "Qantas can confirm that Qantas flight 30 from Hong Kong to Melbourne has been diverted to Manila . The aircraft is on the ground and is currently being inspected”.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been notified of the incident and its director of air safety is being briefed by Qantas officials.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk...395076.ece