Flight returns to San Francisco airport after cabin wall panels come loose

close

Video

Scare in the sky as plane's wall panels come loose

David Lee Miller reports from New York City

SAN FRANCISCO – A Dallas-bound American Airlines flight that departed from San Francisco International Airport turned around and made an emergency landing Monday at SFO after some of the cabin's wall panels cracked loose, aviation and airlines officials said.

The captain of the Boeing 757 decided to turn around an hour into the flight to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport because of a possible blown air duct, American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller said.

Flight 2293 departed from SFO shortly before 1 p.m. and landed without incident at about 2:15 p.m. No one on the plane with 184 passengers and six crew members was hurt, he said.

"The captain elected to return to San Francisco and landed the plane safely," Miller said.

Even though the plane's problem is related to pressurization the cabin did not lose pressure and oxygen masks did not deploy, he said.

James Wilson, of Kyle, Texas, said he and his fellow passengers knew there was a problem within minutes after the flight's takeoff from San Francisco. Wilson, 32, an amateur race car driver returning from a competition in Northern California, said they felt the fuselage violently shake and heard popping noises coming from outside of the Boeing as it made its initial ascent.

Then they watched in horror and screamed for the flight attendants to come as interior panels on both sides of the aircraft pulled apart from the walls.

"It was the whole Row 14 on all sides, from the floor to the ceiling," said Wilson, who was seated in the row right behind and felt a change in cabin pressure. "It sounded like it was popping and banging so loud at first I thought stuff was coming out of the overhead compartments."

Crew members were "pulling the panels apart and looking for daylight behind there," he said.

Wilson took a photograph of what was happening and posted them on his Facebook page so his wife, who was en route to Dallas to pick him up, would know what had happened in case of a crash.

Over the concerns of nervous passengers, the captain announced that the flight would continue on to Dallas because the pressure inside the cabin was stable, but he changed his mind and decided to make the emergency landing after he saw the damaged panels for himself, according to Wilson.

"We had some very professional flight attendants and they did a very good job keeping people calm. They said, `It's just cosmetic," he said.

However, Wilson said he doubts that a blown air duct prompted the emergency.

The FAA will work with the airline to determine the plane's problem, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said.

The passengers are still in San Francisco and American Airlines plans to send a plane from elsewhere to fly them to Dallas on Tuesday, Miller said.