The Backstory: Terror and Survival at 24,000 Feet

Almost 40 years ago, the roof of a jetliner blew off at 24,000 feet. Amazingly, after a harrowing 13 minutes, the pilots managed to land the plane safely. All but one person survived. This was the flight that changed airline safety forever.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, here's a nightmare scenario. You've settled into your
airline seat, buckled up, and taken off on a short
island hopping flight. The trip under sunny skies from Hilo,
Hawaii to Honolulu is expected to take less than an hour,
But twenty three minutes into the flight, the plane literally
rips apart. I'm Patty Steele. Miraculously ninety four of the

(00:24):
ninety five people on board survived. But how and why
did it happen? That's next on the backstory. The backstory
is back. We all experience a little bit of trepidation
when it comes to flying. Am I right. Some of
us are just mildly nervous, maybe just during turbulence, and

(00:46):
some of us are so terrified we won't even get
on an airplane. But imagine how you'd feel about flying
if you survived a flight on a plane that literally
ripped apart in mid air. Close your eyes, imagine looking
up and seeing nothing but sky. It happened almost forty
years ago, and while hair raising, it is an amazing

(01:09):
story of survival. Okay, it's April twenty eighth, nineteen eighty eight.
You're on board a Looha Airline's flight two forty three
on a beautiful day, headed from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu,
just an hour long flight at most. The Boeing seven
thirty seven has eighty nine passengers on board and six
crew members. The plane makes a number of similar trips

(01:32):
between various Hawaiian islands several times a day, which turns
out to be the problem. You're twenty three minutes into
the flight when suddenly, twenty four thousand feet in the air,
there's an explosive bang. Then in less than a second,
the ceiling disappears. The sky is suddenly inside the airplane.

(01:54):
A huge section of the airplane's upper fuselage has ripped
completely away, almost a third of the roof completely gone.
Passengers could suddenly see open sky where the ceiling had
been just seconds before. There's a deafening, unbearable roar filling
the cabin as it instantly loses pressure. Temperatures plunge below

(02:17):
freezing as loose objects are sucked out into the sky.
Passengers are struggling to breathe. The person closest to the
opening is senior flight attendant Clara Belle cbe Lancing, who's
standing in the aisle serving passengers in an instant, she
is sucked out of the aircraft before anybody can react. Okay,

(02:38):
this sounds like a Hollywood disaster movie, right, But it
really happened, and it forever changed how airlines inspect and
maintain aging aircraft. Despite exhaustive searches over the Pacific Ocean,
seebe Lancing is never found. But here's the amazing part.
She was the only person who was killed. Against almost

(02:59):
impossible odds, ninety four of the ninety five people on
board survived. How did that happen? Well? Inside the cockpit,
Captain Robert Scornzeizmer and first Officer Metal and Tompkins suddenly
find themselves trying to fly an airplane that looks pretty
much impossible to control. The cockpit door had been ripped away,

(03:21):
warning lights lit up across the instrument panel. The captain
remembers hearing a sound that sounded like a giant piece
of canvas being ripped in half. They could barely speak
to ground control because of the horrific roar of the wind.
Worse yet, they had no idea how much structural damage
there was and if any of their efforts to control

(03:43):
the plane might make things worse. But Unbelievably, the pilots
stay incredibly calm, their only goal reaching the nearest airport,
which is on Maui. Passengers later described the experience as surreal.
Few folks believed they were already dead. Others just held
onto their seats and prayed. Miraculously, seat belts kept most

(04:06):
of them firmly in place. A few passengers were injured
by flying debris and violent decompression, but the cabin itself
didn't completely fail. The airplane continued flying. That fact alone
amazed aviation experts. Most assumed an aircraft missing a major
part of its roof simply couldn't stay airborne, but the

(04:27):
Boeing seven thirty seven's basic structure stayed intact just long enough.
There were still challenges with controls and symptoms. As the
pilots descended into Maui, they didn't know whether the landing
gear had fully locked into place. Yikes, The crew prepared
for a crash landing, with emergency responders lining the runway.

(04:48):
Passengers just held on and they kept praying. But Captain
Scornzeithemer landed the open top plane safely. It had been
a harrowing thirteen minutes A long time rescue crews rushed aboard.
Against all odds. Ninety four of the ninety five people
aboard had survived, one of aviation history's most amazing examples

(05:12):
of exceptional airmanship. But what had happened? How could an
airplane simply lose its roof? The answer was surprisingly ordinary
metal fatigue. Over almost twenty years, the plane had accumulated
nearly ninety thousand takeoffs and landings because of its short
island roots, the second largest number of flight cycles of

(05:35):
any seven point thirty seven in service at the time.
The plane was pressurizing its cabins as it took off
and depressurizing it as it landed, basically breathing in and
breathing out, stretching its aluminum skin each and every time,
eventually creating microscopic cracks in that skin. Over the years,

(05:57):
tiny cracks can grow even bigger. Investigators found widespread fatigue
damage near the top of the fuselage. On top of that,
corrosion from Hawaii's salty ocean environment had made things even worse.
That Constant cycling and the lack of mandated maintenance became
the plain's greatest enemy. When it reached cruising altitude that day,

(06:20):
the fuselage literally tore open. The investigation into this event
changed airline maintenance around the world, making a much more
aggressive and much safer. Accidents like this are studied in
exhaustive detail, so every incident, every failure, and every close
call becomes a lesson, and every lesson learned has the

(06:43):
potential to save lives. Kind of a good way to
approach life in general. Right. I hope you like the
Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I would
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On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

(07:13):
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durant Group, and Steel Trap Productions.
Our producer is Mike Paeseglia. Our writer is Jake Kushner.
New episodes are out every Tuesday and Friday, and feel
free to reach out to me with comments and story
suggestions on Instagram at reel Patty Steele and on Facebook

(07:34):
at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with
Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't know you
needed to know.