The Plane That Was Ripped Apart | Southwest Airlines 812

Footage Credits: ‪@buybygb‬
737 Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ackook/...


This is the story of southwest airlines flight 812. On the 1st of april 2011 a southwest boeing 737-300 was flying from Phoenix sky harbour international airport to sacramento international airport. On that flight they had 117 passengers and 5 crew members on board. This was supposed to be a routine passenger flight.

It was about 3:55 pm local time. Flight 812 had been assigned FL 360 and so they were climbing through 34,000 feet to reach their cruising altitude. At 3:58 and 05 seconds the CVR picked up a noise. The captain made a radio call to ATC but he was barely audible ATC was having a hard time figuring out who was transmitting. On board the captain realized that they were losing cabin pressurization and he called for oxygen masks on. ATC asked “Southwest eight twelve uh was that you?” over the noise of the wind the captain replies “Yes sir declaring an emergency descent declaring an emergency we lost the cabin”. Something had gone terribly wrong.

A plane's cabin is pressurised so that you and I can breathe when the plane is cruising at high altitudes. With the cabin losing its pressurization everyone on board was at the risk of passing out due to the lack of oxygen. The crew of southwest airlines flight 812 had their work cut out for them.

One they needed to get this plane down to an altitude where the passengers could breathe without oxygen masks. Two they needed to find an airport to get this plane on the ground and three they needed to hope that whatever was wrong with the plane didn't get worse.

Meanwhile in the cabin the yellow emergency oxygen masks had deployed and there was now a two foot hole in the ceiling of the aircraft right beside the baggage bays. They could see the blue arizonian sky through the hole. A flight attendant was on the PA system trying to make an announcement he had not donned his oxygen mask and he passed out. An off duty airline staff member tried to help the unconscious flight attendant and he too lost consciousness.

The pilots pitched the plane down to get down to a safer altitude, ATC offered them 24,000 feet. But The crew asked for 10,000 feet. The controller has to check with other controllers to make sure that the airspace was clear. The controller radioed other controllers “Yeah this is Sector uh sixty. Southwest eight twelve is in an emergency decompression descent he’d like ten thousand feet. Can you approve that? He's doing it anyway”. They got cleared for 10,000 feet.

Now they had to look for a place to put the plane down, the closest airport to them was Yuma international airport. At 4:29 pm the plane landed on runway 21R without further incident. All aboard survived.

Now on the ground the pilots could see what had really happened. A 60 inch long section of the airplane's skin over the over wing exit had just peeled away. That's what had caused the decompression.