In-flight saviors
When a terrifying accident occurred at nearly 10,000 meters, it was only the quick thinking of the well-trained flight crew that ensured everyone aboard the aircraft survived, Wang Ru reports.
It started with a bang. Then the door to the cockpit opened and the plane began to shake violently. As people started screaming, an oxygen mask dropped in front of Bi Nan’s face, and the passenger cabin became dark as the power cut out.
Bi, who was working as the chief stewardess on Sichuan Airlines flight 3U8633 in May 2018, soon realized the cabin was in decompression.
In her decade of working as a stewardess, she had never faced such a situation. Sitting in the front of the passenger cabin, she could see the figure of the copilot, who was not moving at all. She knew how dangerous the situation was, but she didn’t know what had happened and was half frozen by the wind rushing through the cabin.
Fortunately, the well-trained stewardess managed to stay calm. “If I am overwhelmed with panic, what will the passengers feel?” She told herself. Then, just as she had practiced hundreds of times, she told passengers to pay attention to the guidance of flight attendants, directed the attendants to assist and comfort passengers, and attempted to contact the cockpit, yet no one answered.
Bi gestured to the second captain Liang Peng, who had been in the passenger cabin, and he made his way to the cockpit to check what had happened.
Minutes before the door opened, captain Liu Chuanjian and copilot Xu Ruichen had experienced a terrifying moment as one of the front windshields had blown out suddenly, and the swift drop in pressure had sucked the upper part of Xu’s body outside the plane. Luckily, thanks to his seat belt, some of his lower body was still tethered inside the aircraft. When the pressure normalized, he was pushed back to his seat by the strong wind rushing through the window.
The window blowing out set off a chain reaction. The plane shook violently as error messages filled the screens of the flight deck, and instruments began to fail.
What Liang saw when he entered the control cabin was that Liu, who had flown fighter jets when he was younger, was manually controlling the plane. Liang quickly took a seat, fastened the seat belt, applied the oxygen mask and began helping Liu navigate and contact the air traffic control. Xu, the injured copilot, after resting for a while, also managed to send out the 7700 code, signaling the flight had encountered an emergency.
It was a plateau route from Southwest China’s Chongqing city to Lhasa in the Tibet autonomous region. When the accident happened, the plane was at a cruising altitude of 9,800 meters, and had arrived above the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with mountain ranges at an altitude of about 5,000 to 6,000 meters on average, posing a big challenge to Liu, who had to lower the altitude of the plane to overcome the oxygen shortage and ice-cold temperatures, but at the same time ensure that the plane would not collide with any of the mountains.
Normal temperature inside a plane is set at around 20 C, but after the incident, the internal temperature rapidly dropped to not far above the -40 C it would have been at 9,800 meters. When Liang noticed Liu was gently shaking with the cold, he rubbed Liu’s back to warm and encourage him.
“I was not familiar with the captains or the copilot before, but I knew we had strict standards for choosing pilots on a plateau route. There must be two captains who are both flight instructors, so I believed in their proficiency,” says Bi.
“Some passengers were so nervous that they developed cramps. Stewardesses massaged and comforted them by giving assurances that we had the ability to keep them safe,” she adds.
Thirty-four minutes after the windshield blew out, the plane, with 119 passengers and nine crew members, landed safely at the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport in Sichuan province.
After landing, Bi learned what had happened, and she saw that Xu was badly injured, with his shirt and tie torn, and blood all over his face and hands.
It was a real miracle. In 1990, British Airways flight 5390 endured a similar incident where a windshield broke, leading to the captain being sucked out of the plane. That had left a deep impression on Liu. During an interview with China Media Group in 2018, he mentioned that, compared with then, flight 3U8633 was at a higher altitude, flying at a faster speed of about 800 kilometers per hour when the window broke.
“When I started my work that day, I didn’t realize I might die. When the accident happened, I didn’t think I would survive,” said Liu.
After receiving psychological guidance and resting for half a year, crew members returned to work. They were bestowed the title Civil Aviation Administration of China Heroic Crew, and were received by President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in September 2018.
The Captain, a film inspired by the incident, was released in 2019.
Bi attributes the successful landing to the cooperation of the crew members. “I followed the procedure of what I should do. Any well-trained chief stewardess can do what I did, perhaps even do it better,” she says modestly. She was awarded the title of March 8 Red Banner Pacesetter both on the provincial level in 2020 and on the national level in 2021.
“The honor is not for me, but the whole crew. We were not familiar with each other before, but each of us were able to do our jobs well. That is what made it a success.”
Back when Bi was a senior high school student, she had envisioned life as a stewardess to be a glamorous one, wearing an elegant uniform and makeup and having the opportunity to travel a lot. She applied to learn cabin service at university, and when she realized her dream, she found the job to be much more demanding than she had imagined, and not all about handing out food and serving drinks.
“A stewardess should be versatile. We must master the situation aboard the different types of planes our company owns, learn about firstaid, security, and even have a good knowledge of wine and tea. We need to pass many exams and collect experience to become a mature stewardess,” says Bi, who started working in 2007 and became a chief stewardess in 2011.
She says the honor has added pressure, motivating her to be more strict with herself at work. Now she works as the deputy manager of a security and quality monitoring office for Sichuan Airlines.
Fortunately, the incident didn’t leave too many mental scars, but she says she is influenced by it. For example, since she was so shocked when the cockpit door was blown open, for quite a long time afterward, she would be triggered by sudden, loud noises. She pays more attention to the use of seat belts on planes as well.
It also shows more in her attitude toward life. “I have become much more tolerant and slow-paced, less fussy when getting on with others, and more considerate to other people’s situations,” says Bi.
She gets involved in charity work, especially programs to help “left-behind” children living in mountainous areas, whose parents work in faraway cities.
“I feel like I have been given a second chance at life, and want to make the most of it,” says Bi.
Since the accident, crew members regularly gather on the anniversary, but with a tacit agreement to not talk about it. “We believe everything has been reset. The past has gone, and the only thing we can master is the present. We need to look ahead,” says Bi.