ESPN analyst Brian Windhorst has lifted the lid on his recent flight to Los Angeles that was forced to make an emergency landing amid fears that someone was attempting to break into the cockpit.
The NBA pundit was flying with American Airlines from Omaha, Nebraska, to LA on Monday evening, when the plane took a ‘very hard U-turn.’
It turned out that the pilots could no longer communicate with the flight crew in the cabin. When flight attendants began banging on the cockpit door to get their pilots’ attention, they feared a hijacking might be under way.
Before long, police had boarded the plane but it soon turned out to be a false alarm. Windhorst was among the passengers on board and he detailed the scary experience earlier this week.
‘About 10 minutes into the flight, all of a sudden we took a very hard U-turn,’ he explained to ESPN.
‘Then as I was trying to sign into the WiFi, it said how many minutes were left on the flight. It should have been about three hours and 15 minutes. And instead it said 14 minutes.’
Flight radar shows the American Airlines aircraft made a U-turn only minutes into the flight
Police officers board the plane after the pilots returned to the airport amid fears of a hijacking
By then, Windhorst had realized ‘this ain’t right… something’s going on.’ The NBA analyst initially feared that something was wrong with the plane as it returned to Omaha.
He then noticed the flight attendants gathering at the front of the plane. ‘Next thing I know, I hear [he bangs on table]…. I’m like: “What is that sound?” And there’s no announcement at all. Nothing.’
At this point, Windhorst claimed, most passengers on the plane were unaware that anything unusual was unfolding.
‘Above where the bathroom is at the front of the plane, there are red lights on,’ Windhorst continued. ‘I don’t remember seeing red lights like that before.’
He eventually realized that the knocking was coming from the flight attendants, who were banging on the cockpit door.
‘She picked up the phone once or twice – the phone that calls the cockpit – and for a split second I wondered: is there something going on in the cockpit?’ Windhorst said. ‘[Then] all of a sudden you hear the sound of the landing gear dropping.’
That is when passengers began to notice something was awry. ‘I can see the runway and there are emergency lights all over the runway and I thought: “That’s for us,” Windhorst continued.
Given there was ‘no smoke, no funny noises, no nothing,’ he began to wonder if one of the pilots was suffering from a medical issue.
Police cars arrive at Eppley Airfield in Omaha after the flight made an emergency landing
Once the plane landed without a hitch, however, the NBA analyst thought any issues had been settled. ‘[But] we immediately pull over to a holding pad – not the terminal – and as we’re pulling in, the plane gets surrounded by police.’
More cop cars began arriving at speed, while there was also an ambulance and fire truck on hand. The passengers were still unaware what was happening when three police officers came on board.
‘Is everybody OK?’ one asked, to which Windhorst thought: ‘You tell me… what happened?’
It emerged that the pilots mistakenly thought someone was trying to breach the cockpit.
The misunderstanding on American Airlines Flight 6469 came about because the intercom that pilots and flight attendants use to speak to each other had been left on by accident. The pilots heard some static sound over this intercom.
After a delay of several hours, the same pilot flew Windhorst and Co to Los Angeles.