Emergency Door Opens Mid-flight on Emirates Plane

Passengers on an Emirates flight got the scare of a lifetime when the emergency exit reportedly blew open.

British tourist David Reaid and he son Lewis claim that the door flew open with the sound of a "massive explosion" two hours into their flight on the Airbus A380 that was heading from Bangkok to Hong Kong on Monday. They thought a bomb had gone off.

"We were about two hours in when suddenly there was a huge blast," Reid told the Daily Mail. "It was a real shock, so loud that I thought a bomb might have gone off. Air was gushing into the cabin like a gale."

Freezing air rushed into the cabin and the pressure dropped after the business class door opened about an inch and a half.

Frightened passengers started crying as a terified flight attendant ran down the aisles screaming "the door's going to go," Reid said, according to the Daily Mail. The flight attendant hid behind her seat.

"The stewardess jumped up and stared at the door. Her face was drained white. She ran up the aisle, grabbed the intercom and started screaming, 'The door's going to go, the door's going to go!' Then she hid under her chair," Reid said. "Other passengers were crying and saying "We're going to go down, we're going to go down."

Surprisinly the plane didn't make an emergency landing. The flight crew resorted to stuffing blankets and pillows wrapped with tape into the hole. The flight continued even though the opening was making a loud droning noise and the cabin was filled with freezing air at 27,000 feet.

"It was complete panic. The emergency door was ajar and leaving a gaping hole. You could see straight out into the atmosphere, 27,000ft up," Reid said.

"This is a state-of-the-art plane but they were using the most crude method you could imagine to try and plug the hole. The conditions were terrible for the rest of the flight. The door continued to make a horrendously loud droning sound which made it impossible to speak to each other," Reid said.

The flight crew tried to keep the incident a secret form those in economy class by keeping the curtain that separated business class closed.

Reid's trip to Hong Kong was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime but
he came down with a chest infection following the drama on board.
Lewis Reid reported the incident to the Department of Transport's Air Accidents Investigation Branch. The issue is now being investigated by the United Arab Emirates General Authority for Civil Aviation.

Emirates released a statement about the incident according to the Daily Mail.

"We can confirm there was a whistling noise emanating from one of the doors on the A380 upper deck on flight EK384 between Bangkok and Hong Kong on Monday, February 11. At no point was the safety of the flight in jeopardy," an Emirates spokesperson said.