An air traffic controller has spoken of utter panic in the cabin of her ‘fully loaded’ Dreamliner Qatar Airways which rapidly lost altitude after taking off from the Doha, coming close to impacting the sea. One person threw up, he said – and “cabin passengers were screaming”.
Lucas Andersson has been an air traffic controller for 20 years – and he happened to be a passenger on flight QR161 from Doha to Copenhagen on January 10, a 2am flight that , whose aircraft was falling at 50 feet a second after take off of. According to the take-off log from the flightradar24.com, the aircraft reached within 850 feet of the water – or 17 seconds – having initially climbed to 1,850 feetbroadcasts the Daily Mail.
43-year-old Anderson – who was traveling with his wife and two boys aged 11 and 9, along with his sister’s family – said: “After about 70 seconds of flight, suddenly a loud sound, as the airplane took a steep downward slope. Passengers started screaming throughout the cabin, while a man in front of my sister even vomited, so there’s no way this sudden ‘plunge’ went unnoticed by anyone,” a veteran controller initially reported and added:
“The first thing I did was look out the window to try and see how high we were, but it was dark. My youngest son next to me was terrified – and so was I – so I tried to keep calm for his sake. Then it crossed my mind as it was, we will crash. Being in the airline industry, I know how critical the take-off phase is and the descent at such a high rate. It was very scary”.
Anderson said the plane – a 787-8 with a capacity of nearly 250 people – was “loaded”, while the journey it started without any problems. “Everything was normal and there were no delays. We took off just 20 minutes after the scheduled time. From cockpit we were told it would be one pleasant flight with only some light turbulence expected about two hours into the flight,” he said.
After the plane’s terrifying descent, many asked the flight attendants what caused it, but no explanation was given. “That’s one of the things that at the time of the incident was really disturbing. Not a word from the cockpit then, so people turned to the flight attendants, who just said that everything was normal and that we flew through some unexpected weather conditions. They probably didn’t know what happened either and were just trying to calm people down,” he concluded.
Source: News Beast
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