Speaker 1 (00:00):
News, more passengers have come forward to describe the terrifying experience of their plane depressurising and then descending 27,000 feet during an onboard emergency from Sydney to Brisbane. Now, many are demanding answers from the airline about just what caused the issue, which has left some customers traumatised.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Checking their flight path, Virgin passenger Nando Barnett could see they’d lost altitude quickly.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
There was babies crying, there was people singing, there was people praying.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some passengers panicked. Others were calm as the captain guided flight VA993 from Sydney to Brisbane to a safe level, 27,000 feet below cruising altitude, settling under 10,000 feet. Nando says it was an aggressive descent before oxygen masks dropped down.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
You see movies and what you see is quite terrifying. But it’s one thing you see in a movie and another thing is actually experiencing it.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Virgin is standing by its initial statement that the plane is being assessed by engineers and won’t be flying until given the all clear. And while different people can have vastly different responses to a traumatic situation, one thing has united every passenger we’ve spoken to: they want to know what caused the cabin to lose pressure and why. Former pilot and aviation lecturer, Chris Smith, says it’s most likely an equipment problem rather than operator error.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
We don’t know whether it was what we’d call a rapid depressurisation within seconds, or I suspect it’s not, but, or it was a gradual depressurisation. But either way, there’s been some fault, I suspect an engineering fault.

Speaker 5 (01:47):
Well, I think the airline needs to disclose exactly what failed and exactly the mechanism which caused that.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Every passenger we’ve spoken to has praised the actions of the captain and crew, saying they’re relieved they were in capable hands and able to land safely. Some of the passengers didn’t hear announcements. Some of them have been having nightmares. Under Australian law, there is no compensation claim available for psychological damage, only for physical injury. Experts say that needs to change as the result can be long lasting.

Speaker 5 (02:24):
Children are usually very resilient, but there would be a minority of passengers for whom this would be very traumatic and it might even be a permanent injury.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Definitely understanding what happened and why, what happened and why it happened. It would just help us to understand this further and prevent it ideally so that no one else has to go through something like this.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Pip Sheen, 10 News.