Chengdu, Sichuan: In a rare accident on Monday, co-pilot of Sichuan Airlines flight was sucked halfway out of the aircraft after windshield of the plane blew out, aircraft’s captain said as per media reports. The captain had to make a manual landing of the Airbus A319 in emergency after reaching an altitude of 32,000 feet.
A deafening sound tore into the cockpit as it lost pressure as well as temperature. “There was no warning sign. Suddenly, the windshield just cracked and made a loud bang. The next thing I know, my co-pilot had been sucked halfway out of the window,” aircraft’s captain Liu Chuanjian was quoted as saying by the news agency Reuters.
“Everything in the cockpit was floating in the air. Most of the equipment malfunctioned … and I couldn’t hear the radio. The plane was shaking so hard I could not read the gauges,” he added.
The co-pilot was pulled back in the seat and suffered scratches and wrist injury, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said. The other members of the crew also got injured, while all the passengers were safe, the report said.
Meanwhile, the captain was widely praised on social media for bringing the plane down safely and also for saving the life of co-pilot. #ChinaHeroPilot was trending on the Chinese micro-blogging site Sina Weibo on Tuesday, said a BBC report. While some netizens asked for rewarding the captain, others called for better safety measures.
Last month, an Air India flight from Amritsar to Delhi with 240 passengers had experienced severe turbulence where three passengers sustained minor injuries after a window panel of the plane had fallen off.