Passengers aboard Korean Airlines Flight KE189 arrived in Taichung safely yesterday after a scare the previous day encountering uncontrolled decompression, which injured 13 passengers.
Flight KE189 departed from Incheon at 4:45pm on Saturday bound for Taichung with 125 passengers on board.
The flight was above Jeju Island when a fault in the pressurization system occurred 50 minutes after takeoff.
Photo: Ou Su-mei, Taipei Times
Online flight tracker Flightradar24’s data show that the plane dropped more than 8,000 meters within 15 minutes, before it returned and landed back at Incheon Airport at 19:38pm.
Thirteen passengers on board had a headache or earache due to the incident and were hospitalized.
A different flight took off at 10:30am yesterday and arrived at 12:24pm at Taichung International Airport.
Some passengers said they were frightened and that they would not take a flight for a while.
A man surnamed Tseng (曾), who went to South Korea for a business trip, said the children on board were crying when oxygen masks dropped down, and he was afraid that the plunging plane might hit the ground.
Tseng was greeted at the airport by his wife and two daughters with a sign and flowers. He said he was happy to see his family.
A woman surnamed Hsu (許) said she felt something was wrong as the aircraft seemed to be hovering in the air and flight attendants remained in their seats.
Hsu and her daughters put on oxygen masks when the plane began to fall, and she had an earache and headache while her daughters were crying. The airline arranged for passengers’ accommodation that night and said the flight would depart again the next morning, Hsu said, adding that she felt good with their safe return to Taichung.
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