An airline passenger who was sitting next to a man who yanked open an emergency exit door at 700 feet said he “felt the horror of death” and thought it was “the end” for him.
An Asiana Airlines official said on May 27 that a man in his 30s, who was sitting close to the emergency exit had opened the door while the flight from Jeju island was coming in to land in Daegu, South Korea.
The aircraft landed safely and the rogue passenger was arrested in connection with the incident.
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He told police that he had been “under a lot of stress” after having recently lost his job, and had felt suffocated and needed to get off the plane quickly.
Passenger Lee Yoon-jun didn’t at first realise that it was the person sitting next to him that had opened the door.
He told CNN: “I just felt the horror of death. I thought, I’m going to die. This is it, this is the end for me.
“In disaster movies,” he added, “everyone always seems to die when a door opens in the air. I wondered what I had done wrong in my life. It was just a fleeting moment, but I had so many thoughts."
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Lee said he had helped subdue the man after he realised the door was opening. In retrospect, he added, something about the man’s manner had seemed “off”.
He said: “From the moment he boarded the plane, he looked pale and gave off a bad vibe.
"He seemed somewhat dark, constantly fidgeting, looking around at people and acting strangely.”
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Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said it was “technically not possible” to open the doors of an Airbus A321 while it was in flight.
He said he had found it hard to understand how the passenger had opened the door into the 170-mph air current.
“It seems implausible that the door could be opened in the first place and then against the airstream technically impossible, but somehow or another it has happened,” he said.
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