Emergency at 3 miles high: Alaska Airlines pilots, passengers kept calm after fuselage blowout

Passengers remained surprisingly calm after an Alaska Airlines flight had part of its fuselage blow out three miles above Oregon. They told reporters that the first six minutes of their Friday flight out of Portland International Airport had been routine when suddenly there was a loud bang. Air was violently sucked from the cabin with a force so strong that it twisted the metal bracing holding down the seats next to the hole. By fate, those seats were unoccupied. Federal officials said the pilots and flight attendants did a heroic job of landing the plane with no one suffering a serious injury.