Shocking video shows the aftermath of a window blowing out on an American passenger jet. Video/Marty Martinez
A survivor of the United Airlines Flight 811 flight from Honolulu in 1989 says her own experience sprang to mind when she read about a woman being sucked out a passenger jet in the US.
Kiwi woman Beverley Thomas was on the Auckland-bound United Airlines Flight 811 when the cargodoor opened.
New Zealander Lee Campbell, were killed, but 346 people survived when the United Airlines Boeing 747 lost a cargo door on a Hawaii-Auckland flight.
The door swung wide, the fuselage peeled back, and nine passengers were sucked to their deaths.
The jet, with a huge hole blown out of its side, made an emergency landing at Honolulu.
The woman survived the initial horror with critical head injuries but later died in hospital after the plane made an emergency landing.
"I heard it on the early news, and I've since read about it on my little iPad," Thomas said.
While it jogged her memory of her own experience back in 1989, Thomas said the fact that the victim was sucked half way out the window, then pulled back by other passengers, made it quite different.
The gaping hole in the plane, which managed to land back at Honolulu. PHOTO/HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER
"The people that were sucked out of our plane, except for one woman who actually went into the engine, they disappeared, never to be found again," she said.
"They obviously went down into the sea."
"The people sitting in the middle section right opposite them never saw them go out, it all happened in a flash.
"It was just 'bang' - hole in the plane and they had disappeared."
Campbell was one of those killed on Flight 811. The New Zealander had been returning home but never made it back.
His parents Kevin and Susan Campbell investigated the cause of the decompression independently.
They found the cause of the incident was the combination of an electrical problem and inadequate aircraft design
