A reality TV star has revealed she was on board a Jetstar plane during a terrifying incident in which a passenger attempted to open the cabin door mid-flight.
Survivor All Star alum Brooke Jowett was on flight JQ-34 from Bali to Melbourne – which left about 8.40pm Monday local time with more than 200 passengers on board – when a woman pulled down the door release lever.
That set off an alarm – as the flight cruised at altitude of 33,000feet and a speed of 500knots – which alerted the crew and they swiftly stopped the woman before she managed to fully open the door.
The incident occurred about two hours into the flight and plane was then turned around and landed back at Denpasar airport.
‘Good morning everybody, I had a lovely three hour sleep,’ Ms Jowett said.
‘We got back to a hotel at about 1am after our lovely night, and our scare on the flight.
‘Turns out the reason behind the lady wanting to open the door is because she wanted to sit in a different row and have a chair that could recline.
‘So she decided to try to open the doors, which apparently triggered something to do with the emergency slide and yeah, it was a big bloody big panic, it was very, very scary but we’re fine.’
She said the woman was arguing with the Jetstar staff about her seat and that it ‘escalated’.
‘She was very unhappy and decided she wanted to get off the flight, but we were like, more than an hour into the flight over the ocean and yeah we all got told to put our seatbelts on. Very freaky
‘One of the guys who was sitting in front of us was down near the toilets and he pulled her away from the door as she was trying to open it.
‘He was an off-duty police officer apparently, so he saved the day. Thank God for that.
‘But yeah, don’t know what would have happened otherwise. I know there’s a few security measures, but it wasn’t fun.’
The passenger was removed from the aircraft and taken into custody by local authorities in Bali.
‘We had an aircraft return to Denpasar last night after a disruptive passenger attempted to open one of the aircraft doors and was abusive to our crew,’ a Jetstar spokesperson told Daily Mail .
‘The safety and welfare of our customers and crew is our top priority and we thank them for the way they responded to the situation.
‘This sort of unacceptable behaviour will never be tolerated on our flights.’
The flight was cancelled and Jetstar said it would provide customers with an alternative flight.
The woman had been seated towards the back of the aircraft.
Once the situation was under control, the flight crew made an announcement to all passengers about what had happened and why the flight had turned around.
Dr David Birch, a Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at Surrey University, said the massive difference in air pressure between the inside of the cabin and outside made it almost impossible to open a door at cruising altitude.
Opening a door at that altitude could theoretically cause objects or people to be sucked out of the aircraft and for temperature and oxygen levels to plummet, but that the force required would be far above what a person could manage.
‘The pressure-lock only really starts to work at higher altitudes,’ he previously told the BBC.
The doors are also ‘armed’ while on a flight as a security measure and must be ‘disarmed’ by the pilot to allow them to open.