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The passenger seated next to the man on a South Korean flight who pulled the emergency exit said he was terrified and thought he might die as wind rushed into the cabin and breathing became harder.
Lee Yoon-Joon described to Yonhap News that he physically restrained the passenger who allegedly opened the exit with his bare hands.
He said he wondered to himself ‘am I going to die?’
Lee can be seen in the widely circulated video of the door being opened and high speed wind rushing in. He is wearing red pants and is clearly in distress as air whips his face.
The winds were so intense that Lee said it was like being in a disaster movie.
Prior to the terrifying incident, Lee says he got an uneasy feeling from the passenger sitting next to him, who, throughout the flight, made prolonged, disconcerting eye contact.
The flight was about 700 feet off the ground when the emergency exit was pulled.
Captain Sully Sullenberger, who famously landed a plane in the Hudson River after losing power in both engines, told ABC that based on estimates of how fast the plane was going, passengers aboard experienced winds equivalent to those of a Category 5 hurricane.
He noted that at a higher altitude, the air pressure inside the cabin would have made it difficult to open the cabin door – and at a very high altitude, it would have been impossible.
In response to the incident, Asiana Airlines has barred passengers from booking exit row seats.
Horrifying video shows passengers gripping on to their seats as the wind billowed into the aircraft descending towards the South Korean city of Daegu on Friday.
Children began shaking with fear and crying when the door of the Asiana Airlines plane opened suddenly, witnesses said.
Some 12 passengers were so terrified that they were sent to hospital with breathing difficulties once the plane landed safely at Daego airport at 12.40pm local time with the door still open.
A 33-year-old man told police that he felt ‘suffocated’ after he was arrested. He now faces ten years in prison for opening the plane door when the aircraft was still 650ft above the ground. His name has not yet been released.
Some people on board tried to stop the man, who later told police he was stressed because he had recently lost his job, from opening the door but were unsuccessful, the Transport Ministry said.
‘Police are questioning him jointly with the land and transport ministry over aviation safety laws violations,’ the ministry said.
‘Under these laws, a person who opens a plane door without authorization is subject to a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.’
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Police have detained a male passenger in his 30s for questioning after he opened the door when the plane was still about 650ft above the ground
Rescue workers move students on stretchers at Daegu International Airport
Rescue workers move a passenger into an ambulance at Daegu International Airport
The plane, carrying 194 people including 48 teenage athletes who were set to compete in a national sports event in the city of Ulsan, had departed from the island of Jeju when the door opened.
Video shows wind whipping through the open door, with fabric seat-backs and passengers’ hair flapping wildly as some people shouted in shock.
Another video shows two male passengers, wearing their seatbelts, wincing as the wind whipped around them while they gripped onto the armrests of their seats.
A 44-year-old passenger told Yonhap that it was ‘chaos’ on the flight after the door was opened.
‘It was chaos with people close to the door appearing to faint one by one and flight attendants calling out for doctors on board through broadcasting while others were running down the aisle in panic,’ the passenger said.
‘I thought the plane was blowing up. I thought I was going to die like this.’
‘Children quivered and cried in panic,’ the mother of one of the athletes said. ‘Those sitting near the exit must have been shocked the most.’
A transport ministry official on the aviation safety team said that this was ‘the first such incident’ they were aware of in Korean aviation history.
South Korea’s aviation industry has a solid track record for safety, experts say.
Asiana, which was established in 1988 as a rival to flag carrier Korean Air, was involved in a major crash in San Francisco in July 2013.
At that time, Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul clipped a sea wall with its landing gear, then crashed and burst into flames, killing three people and leaving 182 injured.
And while it is rare for a plane door to open while the aircraft is mid-air, it has happened before.
In January, a Russian An-26 plane’s rear door sprang open shortly after take-off in the world’s coldest region.
The pilot made a rapid emergency landing at Magan in the Siberian region of Yakutsk, and all on board were ‘safe’ despite the intense cold in the cabin.
