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Pilot Tells Passengers To Pray As Plane Violently Shakes Mid-Flight — Viral Video

By Roz Zurko
Published on: 01:25 PST, Jun 26, 2017

An Air Asia flight felt like being trapped in a washing machine that was off balance and violently shaking, said a passenger after an emergency landing in Australia. Passengers were crying and panic was seen on the faces of some who quickly pulled out life preservers for what they thought was the inevitable.

The pilot came over the plane’s intercom system requesting the passengers start to pray not long after the shaking started, according to WSB-TV. A video posted online by one of the passengers showed the violent shaking of the aircraft and even the sound was reminiscent to the agitator inside a washing machine being out of sync.

This flight emergency started over the Indian Ocean and passengers were told by the pilot that their “survival” will have a lot to do with their cooperation. The video below not only shows the passenger cabin shaking, it also captured the pilot’s words to the frightened passengers during one of his messages heard over the cabin’s intercom system.

According to My Fox News, the pilot actually told the passengers twice that they needed to pray. Damien Stevens was on board the Air Asia flight and he told reporters “It shook for the whole ride back, close on two hours.”

According to one of the passengers, the pilot told the passengers that he was scared, which didn’t do much to calm the situation, as seen in the above video. Air Asia Flight D7237 departed from Australia and was headed to Malaysia on Sunday when the A330 aircraft began this violent shaking movement about 90 minutes into the six-hour flight.

In the video, you can see a clip of one of the engines wobbling like a washing machine agitator out of sync. It is not known if this is what caused the violent shaking motion, but the passenger who took the video seemed to think it was.

Some of the passengers who spoke to the press said they heard “a loud bang” around an hour and 15 minutes into the flight, and the shaking started right after that loud noise. The pilot told the passengers via the cabin intercom they were having difficulties with the engine. Once the plane landed, the airline reported that the aircraft had a “technical issue.”

The plane turned around and headed back to Australia, but the passengers endured this shaking and the frightening feelings that went along with it for almost two hours. That is how long it took before the plane finally touched down for an emergency landing. The passengers were told to get into the “brace” position for two minutes during the landing. Although the picture below is a bit blurry, there’s no mistaking the fright in this unnamed passengers eyes as he went through the ordeal 30,000 feet above the ocean.

The passengers erupted in applause once they landed, and the pilot shook the hand of every person on that flight before they left the plane, reports Fox. The passengers also praised the pilot for landing the plane safely under the very scary conditions that started while the plane was 30,000 feet over the Indian Ocean.

Once landing, some of the passengers scurried to catch another flight for their original destination, but other passengers were so upset over the ordeal that they wouldn’t get on another plane. This experience was so frightening for several passengers that getting on another flight was not in their immediate future.

[Featured Image by Manish Swarup/AP Images]

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