The Alaska Airlines pilot who rescued 171 passengers and four flight attendants when a door panel flew off the plane was unaware of the emergency situation during the flight – but knew something was “catastrophically wrong.”

First Officer Emily Wiprud feared passengers were being sucked out of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 when she turned around and saw empty seats during an emergency landing she and her captain made at Portland International Airport in January.

“The first sign was an explosion in my ears and then a whooshing sound of air,” Wiprud told CBS News. “My body was thrown forward and there was also a loud bang. … The door to the flight deck was open. I saw hoses hanging out of the cabin.”

The flight departed Oregon International Airport shortly after 5 p.m. on January 5, bound for Ontario, California.

The horrific tire blowout occurred six minutes after takeoff, when the plane was 5,800 meters in the air.

Wiprud said she and her captain were unaware that a door stopper on the left side of the hull had been blown off, but they recognized that a serious incident had occurred.

According to investigators, four important screws were missing from the connector of the new Alaska MAX 9, causing the panel to fly off.

“I didn’t know there was a hole in the plane until we landed,” Wiprud said. “I knew something had gone catastrophically wrong.”

“It was so incredibly loud,” she recalls. “And I remember putting on the oxygen mask and trying to communicate with air traffic control and wondering, ‘Why can’t I hear anything?'”

When the plane’s fairing was blown away, Wiprud’s headset, two passengers’ phones, and several aircraft components were sucked out of the plane.

At one point, Wiprud turned around and opened the door to the cockpit. Everyone who looked at her remained silent and calm before she asked the flight crew if everyone was OK.

An employee replied that there were “empty seats and injured people.”

“I opened the cockpit door and saw calm, silence, hundreds of eyes staring at me,” she said. She asked flight attendants if everything was OK, and crew members told her there were “empty seats and injured people” among the passengers.

Wiprud and one of the flight attendants feared they had lost several passengers during the horrific explosion in the air.

“I said there’s a hole in the back of the plane and I’m sure we lost passengers,” a flight attendant with about 20 years of experience told the National Transportation Safety Board after discovering the hole in the plane and five empty seats.

The unnamed flight attendant was worried about an unaccompanied child further back in the plane. “All I could think about was that he was sitting there and was too small to reach the mask and was probably really scared.”

A teenager sitting near the hole had his shirt ripped from his body by the fast-flowing air.

Remarkably, there were no deaths among the 177 people on board – 171 passengers, four flight attendants and two crew members.

Three people on board suffered minor injuries.

The pilots turned the airliner around and returned to Portland International Airport. The chaotic flight lasted 20 minutes.

Three passengers have now filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Alaska Airlines and Boeing, claiming that both parties ignored obvious warning signs and that the fight should never have taken place.

Kyle Rinker and his girlfriend Amanda Strickland, along with another passenger, Kevin Kwok, filed the lawsuit late last month on behalf of the passengers of Alaskan Airlines Flight 1282 in Multnomah County, Oregon.

Wiprud spoke alongside Captain Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, who praised the flight crew’s conduct during the emergency.

“The most important safety feature of an aircraft is two well-trained, qualified and rested pilots. … This crew implemented their training instinctively and simply executed it flawlessly,” Ambrosi said.

The first officer, who had a total of about 8,300 hours of flight experience before the incident, praised the captain of the flight, who had a total of about 12,700 hours of flight experience before January 5.

“My captain is a hero. The same goes for the flight attendants and all the staff who supported us that day,” said Wiprud. “And that should be celebrated. Everyone survived.”

In recognition of their skills and professionalism, Wiprud and the captain were awarded the ALPA Superior Airmanship Award 2023.