Delta Airlines passengers were left with burst eardrums and bleeding noses after their flight suddenly lost pressure and plummeted on Tuesday.
Passengers aboard a flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Portland, Oregon, felt the cabin lose pressure before the plane rapidly descended, according to KSL.
The plane experienced the issue at 10,275 feet in the air. Over the course of four and a half minutes, the plane descended from 33,975 feet to 25,075 feet, falling roughly 33 feet per second.
The Boeing 737-900 aircraft with 140 passengers had to make an emergency landing in Salt Lake City because of pressurization issues, Delta Airlines wrote in a statement.
The emergency landing happened 30 or 40 minutes after the plane departed, according to Newser.
‘I looked over at my husband, and he had both of his hands over his ears, you know, kind of leaning forward,’ flier Caryn Allen told the outlet.
Allyn added that she ‘looked about a row behind me, over on the other side of the aisle, and there was a gentleman that clearly had a very bad bloody nose, and people were trying to help him.’
Delta passengers were left injured after a Sunday flight experienced pressure issues
Another fellow passenger Jaci Purser told KSL it felt like her ear was being stabbed from all of the pressure in the cabin, revealing that she ‘grabbed my ear, and I pulled my hand back, and there was blood on it’.
The plane started experiencing issues at 8:14am landed at 8:27am local time on Sunday and paramedics were waiting to treat those who were hurt.
Ten people needed medical treatment or evaluation from the paramedics when they got off the flight.
Purcer added that once the flight landed, she was diagnosed with a ruptured eardrum. Paramedics gave her antibiotics, nasal spray steroids and decongestants.
In a statement, Delta Air Lines said the aircraft was put back into service on Monday.
The airline said: ‘We sincerely apologize to our customers for their experience on flight 1203 on September 15.
‘The flight crew followed procedures to return to SLC where our teams on the ground supported our customers with their immediate needs.’
Retired Delta pilot Valerie Walker told KSL that flights usually maintain cabin pressure.
The Portland-bound plane was forced to do an emergency landing at about 8:30am in Salt Lake City
The Boeing 737-900 flying from Utah to Portland had to return to Salt Lake City when the pressure dropped
She told the outlet: ‘It’s an automatic thing the airplane does, and we monitor it to see if it’s not doing what it should be doing.
‘I suspect they saw the cabin pressurization problem and heard it, asked air traffic control to go out over the Great Salt Lake because it was visual, where they had time and they had safe clearance to go through our emergency procedures and try to find out what was wrong.’
Walker told the outlet that she has had similar experiences before, but never as severe as on Sunday.
The Federal Aviation Administration is planning to investigate the incident, according to WPTV.
The cause of this issue was not announced.
