A sudden loss of cabin pressure aboard a 747 Pan Am jumbo jet, which forced the pilot to dive and make an emergency return to Los Angeles, occurred after a small door covering a pressure valve fell off in flight, an airline official said Saturday.
None of the 147 passengers and crew aboard the Friday afternoon flight bound for London were injured in the incident.Several passengers, however, reported that the decompression was marked by a "cold wind" inside the cabin as oxygen masks dropped from their overhead compartments.
"We were very scared," Jane Hinckley, a passenger from New Zealand headed for Europe told the Los Angeles Times. "We went down so fast that we were pressed back flat against our seats. We could hear the wind rushing and it suddenly got freezing cold."
Pan American World Airways spokeswoman Susan Kimper said an inspection of the Boeing 747 revealed that a 2 1/2-by-1 1/2-foot door covering an outflow valve on the bottom of the fuselage tail section had fallen off during the flight.
The valve controls pressurization in the cabin, she said.
"The door blew off and the airplane began to depressurize," she said.
The pilot followed standard emergency proceedures and dove to 14,000 feet, an altitude at which both passengers and crew could breathe comfortably without cabin pressurization or oxygen masks.
The pilot jettisoned about 85,000 pounds of jet fuel before landing at Los Angeles International Airport about 3:30 p.m. Friday, Kimper said.
Passengers resumed their trip to London on another Pan Am aircraft about 8 p.m. Friday, she said.