It’s hard to even imagine the experience.
The plane was hijacked one hour after take-off. This is how it went down.
After entering the plane, I went to my seat: economy class, window-side and next to the right wing. As it was around midnight, I quickly fell asleep during take-off. I was waken up an hour later due to the sound of all the oxygen mask going down. I immediatly thought « what the… » I looked at my neighbor, she seemed as confused at me: the plane was not behaving oddly so I thought it was a simple technical glitch or somebody pressed the wrong button. Everybody looked at each other, thinking what’s going on. Suddenly, a deep and angry voice talked through the cabin radio: “SIT DOWN, PUT YOUR MASKS ON, I’M CUTTING THE OXYGEN”, three times. At this point, I realized that the situation is serious: someone is in the pilot cabin and has hijacked the plane. Within a few seconds, the oxygen went down in the cabin: I felt very lightheaded and quickly decided to put on the oxygen mask like the rest of the passengers. Quickly after that, the plane suddenly started dropping down for about 8 seconds then went fast back up, then finally stablized. People were crying, yelling, praying. I was in complete panic. Cold. We were then waiting for an update, an information, what was going on. But it never came. We flew for 6 more hours, knowing only that a pirate was at command. Who was he, what was his intentions…At 5:30am we were still high, high in the sky. Down throught the window , I could see a coast and some light far away that somehow reassured me. Around 5:45, the plane started suddenly to do circle. Circles left, circle right. It seemed that this went on at least 20 times. I was thinking that maybe the pirate wants to deplete the fuel and stall the plane. We were still at the same altitude, we were not going towards land. After this terribly long sequence of turns, the plane started going down towards land at a normal speed. When we reached the clouds, the wings deployed completely like a normal landing, but it seemed to me like it wanted to cover more area to do more damage. I was thinking : that’s it, we’re crashing into something. Looking down to the window I see a light, two, three, I can’t see what’s ahead. It’s still dark. We’re going fast, we’re flying over many houses now. And suddenly, under us, the airport.
…At this point, for the first time in 6 hours, we got an update from the steward telling us about the copilot, that we are in Geneva and that soon the Swiss police will enter and evacuate the plane. Eventually, the Swiss tactical forces entered the plane, telling is to put our hands on the head and stay calm. It took about 2-3 minutes person person to evacuate. An hour later, I was finally out. We were checked and accompagnied very kindly by the swiss. There were sandwitches, hot chocolate, free wifi and psychologues.
(HT: @realandyluten)
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…hot chocolate and free wi-fi, you say?
Aircraft oxygen systems rely on either a chemical oxygen generator or a central gaseous oxygen supply. Both systems only contain enough oxygen for ~15 minutes of production…so something doesn’t quite add up here. If the cabin really was depleted of oxygen, then every passenger would have died from hypoxia after six hours at altitude.
OP of that thread said oxygen was back again.
On Andrew’s point, I am no technical expert on aircraft oxygen systems but I don’t know why you would ever build in a feature that allows for a pilot to depressurize the cabin at altitude. Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me has an answer to that question.
Just last week, I was trying to put together a Star Alliance award trip and a couple of Ethiopian flights were my most logical routing. But I booked a more circuitous alternative because I just didn’t feel comfortable flying Ethiopian (and connecting in Addis Ababa). Honestly, I felt like I was being a little silly: I mean, Ethiopian had to be about as safe as the other Star airlines, right?
I think this incident will confirm my silly bias for the next trip!
Nothing good ever happens when flying coach.
@Dan I’m a pilot and an aviation professional. There is always capability in every jet to “dump” the cabin, i.e depressurize the aircraft suddenly and completely.
This feature basically is only for massively rare instances and the minuscule possibility of the pressurization system malfunctioning leading to over pressurization and possible structural failure of the fuselage (a bad thing) Also in the case of a huge cabin fire to starve the fire of air (oxygen) and that would ONLY be used at low altitude of course.
Not something a pilot would ever relish doing, or do on purpose without warranting it’s use. He was clearly out of his mind, but he endangered 100s of passengers for his own agenda. Not to mention probably tarnishing the image a flag carrier of an already troubled country and hundreds of it’s employees. Disgusting and a setback for the airline industry as a whole.
OK, OK, but come on and tell us the important stuff: what kind of champagne where they serving? Was there no Krug? Oh the humanity…
@Ken – I think this happened in business class, too… just sayin’
If you read the Reddit AMA, the agreed upon consensus was that the hijacker just made the oxygen thing up to scare people and keep them in their seats and that he didn’t actually do anything with the cabin environment.
I like how the Swiss police dealt wtih business class with a “special dedicated team so they could go home faster.”
So, lets focus on the important details: do you guys get extra miles for all those extra laps around Geneva?
@Stephen – no, in fact there was a class action suit against United for not awarding actual FLOWN miles and it was dismissed..