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'AND THEN, WHOOSH! SHE WAS GONE'

By
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April 29, 1988 at 8:00 p.m. EDT

KAHULUI, HAWAII, APRIL 29 -- Aloha Airlines flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing was in the

first-class section of Flight 243, at 24,000 feet 20 minutes out of Hilo

en route to Honolulu.

"She was just handing my wife a drink," said William Flanigan, a

54-year-old aerospace engineer from St. Davids, Pa., who was on a 21st

wedding anniversary trip to Hawaii.

"She had stopped and told us this was the last call. We were going to

be descending. And then, whoosh! She was gone. Their hands just touched

when it happened."

A gaping hole had opened the roof of the Boeing 737-200 jet with an

explosive sound as pressurized air in the cabin blasted into the

atmosphere, apparently pulling Lansing, 55, to her death, and exposing

the aircraft and 94 others aboard to a tornado of wind that quickly

peeled back the top of the cabin from the cockpit to the wing, one

witness said, "like a banana."

Joy Flanigan, in seat 2-C next to what once had been a window, fell

forward onto the tray table, her head and face cut by flying metal and

flailing wires.

"Her head was laying down on a tray table with blood all over," her

husband said. "I could see the sky. I could see the ocean. I was scared

to death the wind was going to rip her away. I grabbed her two arms and

told her I loved her. I was afraid we were going to crash."

But pilot Robert Schornstheimer, 42, a 12-year veteran with the

airline, unable to know anything except that there was a tremendous loss

of cabin pressure, was diving to 6,000 feet and fighting to keep Flight

243 airborne as he headed for an emergency landing, which he

successfully made at Kahului Airport on Maui Thursday.

"I couldn't believe it," Flanigan said Friday at the Maui Beach

Hotel, where he was recuperating and waiting for his wife to be released

from Maui Memorial Hospital.

"I remember saying, 'Joy, my God, the guy is still flying this

plane.' There were wires hanging all around, wrapped around me,"

Flanigan said. "I remember yelling 'I'm being electrocuted.' I really

thought I was being burned alive."

Flanigan, his wife and 59 other passengers and crew were treated at

the hospital after the emergency landing in Kahului at 1:58 p.m. The jet

was miraculously in one piece.

Dale Bringleson, owner of Island Aeromotive, watched the landing from

his company hangar at Kahului Airport. "He did an excellent job of

flying," he said of Schornstheimer. "Because the upper structure was

gone, there was a possibility of the plane buckling. If he hadn't been

real careful, it could have busted in two."

Thirteen persons, including Joy Flanigan were admitted to the

hospital overnight, and seven were still there late today. One remains

in critical condition, according to Dr. Charles Mitchell, director of

emergency services.

The Coast Guard cutter Cape Corwin from Maui and helicopters from

Barber's Point Coast Guard Air Station on Oahu searched the waters

between Maui and Oahu for any sign of the missing flight attendant and

for debris from the aircraft.

One passenger, Eric Becklin of Honolulu, an astronomer, was sitting

three seats from the back of the aircraft when "all of a sudden, I heard

a loud noise, a bang, but not an explosion, and felt a strong pressure

change. I looked up front and saw the front of the top left of the

airplane disintegrating, just going apart, pieces of it flying away. It

started with a hole about a yard wide, and it just kept coming apart.

"I thought it was going to fall apart before he could land it,"

Becklin said.

"One stewardess was walking up and down and telling people to fasten

their safety belts. She tried to call the pilot on the intercom and

couldn't get through, and then came back and asked if there was anyone

aboard who could fly the plane."

If there had been, they would have had to have walked through a

30-foot stretch of open cabin to get to the cockpit.

"There was no warning at all," Becklin said. "It put a whole new

perspective on the word 'sudden.' I felt an incredible sadness that I

wouldn't see my family again, but the next instant all of the people in

the back of the plane looked at each other and there was this incredible

wave of hope as the plane continued forward. We all started talking

instantly, babbling, that the pilot was going to be able to land the

plane."