Terrifying moment passenger jet forced to make emergency landing is caught on camera by British tourist

 
Terrifying ordeal: The incident was caught on camera by British tourist Ethan Williams (Picture: YouTube/One City At A Time)
YouTube/One City At A Time
Robin de Peyer1 August 2015

A British tourist filmed the terrifying moment a passenger jet was forced to make an emergency landing after smoke was detected on board.

The ordeal was caught on camera by Ethan Williams, 25, as he flew on a Cathay Pacific plane from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

In the four-minute clip, events manager Mr Williams talks through the incident using his phone as cabin crews alert passengers on the CX844 flight that they must complete an emergency landing.

"Ok, so I'm not sure what's happening but there's something going on with this flight all the flight attendants are running around like crazy and all the warning signs are going off," he says.

"We've just had an announcement, we've got an emergency landing. We've not been told what is going on but we've got an emergency landing."

Crew members are heard telling passengers to take off their shoes and coats and put their life vests on, before instructing them on what to do when they hear the word "brace".

Fortunately, the Boeing 777-300ER plane - which was carrying 276 passengers and 18 crew staff - is able to make a landing at Eareckson Air Station om Alaska.

Relieved passengers, who had been sitting in the dark, are then heard applauding after the plane successfully completes the landing.

Cathay Pacific said the problem was with a cooling fan which in turn created the smoke.

The airline tweeted: "Our preliminary inspection indicates that an equipment cooling fan below the cabin floor near cargo compartment had failed.

"Smoke was detected largely around the cockpit area as a result of this failure which led the Captain to make the precautionary diversion."

Another passenger, Genevieve Cousineau, 25, wrote on Facebook: "We were over the ocean and our plane smelled strange".

“Everyone was in a panic, like, ‘oh my God, this is really happening'. People were putting life jackets on, the cabin crew were showing us the brace position and helping us practice.

“This is when people started to freak out. You could just see the fear in people’s eyes. Some people were trying to figure out the life jackets, can we keep our shoes on, what are we supposed to do…?”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in