2023-06-09 04:38:00
(CNN) — Do you think that when you travel by plane you always get a bad seat? Then think of Lee Yoon-jun.
The passenger he was traveling with on a recent Asiana Airlines flight opened the plane’s emergency door while it was still airborne.
“I felt the horror of death. I thought: I’m going to die. This is the end of me,” Lee recalls of his harrowing experience on what was supposed to be a routine flight of less than an hour from Jeju to Daegu, Korea. South, last month.
“In disaster movies, everyone always seems to die when a door opens in midair. I wondered what I had done wrong in my life. It was only a fleeting moment, but I had many thoughts,” he adds.
He was watching YouTube on his mobile phone when the door opened and a strong wind hit him, blowing away his cap and headphones and making it difficult for him to breathe.
Looking up, he saw clouds where the emergency door should have been. The plane was entering the ground, but was still 213 meters above sea level.
Lee Yoon-jun thought he was going to die. She now reflects back and, as she says, she tries to enjoy life more.
For Lee, imminent death seemed certain.
Looking at the man sitting next to him, Lee noted that he “seemed tense” and they were both “trembling with fear.”
“When I looked down, I noticed that her feet were swaying in the wind,” Lee says.
However, at the time he did not know that his neighbor was the one who would later be held responsible.
Lee says she didn’t see the man open the door. At first he assumed it was a technical glitch.
But once the plane’s wheels touched the ground, the man next to him seemed to try to jump out of the plane, which was still moving at high speed. Lee guessed that he was having a panic attack.
“As I was looking at the flight attendant, I heard the sound of someone next to me unbuckling their seatbelt, I realized that this person was leaning towards the emergency exit.”
Lee says he then subdued the man, aided by other passengers, while the flight attendant called for help.
It was later that Lee realized what had really happened.
When the plane arrived at the airport, the police detained the man in his 30s suspected of violating air safety laws.
Police, who described the man as mentally ill, said he told them he had felt suffocated and wanted to get off the plane quickly.
Lee says that, looking back, he had actually been uncomfortable sitting next to him for the entire flight. “From the moment he got on the plane he seemed pale and gave off bad vibes. He seemed somewhat gloomy, constantly fidgeting, looking at the people around him and acting strangely.”
Of the 200 passengers the plane was carrying, none were seriously injured, although nine suffered from hyperventilation, a relatively benign outcome given the seriousness of the situation.
According to Asiana Airlines, investigations into the incident are ongoing, in particular into how the man was able to open the door while the plane was still in flight.
Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer, then stated: “We are investigating the circumstances of this incident. Normally, aircraft doors can only be opened on landing.”
Lee says he hasn’t heard from Asiana Airlines since the incident. But he feels like he’s been given a second chance at life.
“I feel like I’ve been reborn, I’m trying to have more fun and live more interestingly. I’m enjoying it,” he says. Lee says that she’s also liking being thought of as a hero for stopping the passenger from jumping out of the plane.
“I suddenly became a temporary celebrity. Whenever I’m with my friends, I jokingly refer to myself as a celebrity,” says Lee.
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