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The authorities claim that the inability of a flight crew to tip a switch caused the aircraft to be depressurized over Mumbai, leaving passengers in oxygen masks and almost losing consciousness.
Satish Nair told the Washington Post that he boarded the Jet Airways flight before sunrise on Thursday, bound for Mumbai to Jaipur on a business trip. He took his business class seat and a few minutes after taking off, he felt a pain in his ears – "like needles", he said.
"I thought it might have been due to a cold," Nair said. He looked around and saw that most of the other passengers were already asleep. So he thought of reading a newspaper as the Boeing 737 went up and the oxygen around him became imperceptibly thinner.
"Suddenly, my shoulder started to fall," Nair said. He estimated that about five minutes had passed since takeoff and that he was now having trouble breathing. He was confused.
These are all normal symptoms of the early stages of hypoxia.
Just as Nair was feeling at the edge of the blackout, a mask fell from the ceiling above him. He put it like drops of blood began to form in his nostrils. The masks fell in all the other seats, he said, but no announcement was made on the speaker and most of the passengers were still asleep.
Nair felt the blood flowing in her oxygen mask – not bad, but after several minutes, a woman who was sleeping next to him stood up. "She panicked," he said. "She had severe, excruciating pains in her ear."
People started waking up all over the plane, he recalls. Some were stunned, others blew and few seemed to know what they had to do. Nair said he saw flight attendants trying to contact the pilot, and they seemed as confused as everyone else.
"Everyone was in shock," Nair said.
Nearly 15 minutes after the start of the flight, he said, an attendant finally climbed onto the speaker and asked everyone to put on his mask. At that time, many people were "bleeding profusely" from their noses and ears.
A director of the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation later told the Hindustan Times that 30 passengers – nearly one in five in the plane – were emptied of their ears or noses and some also suffered from headaches.
The panic in the plane calmed down once everyone had their mask, Nair said. But it was a long time to wait for the plane to go around and land at the Mumbai airport.
Once on the ground, Nair removed his mask and cleaned himself with handkerchiefs. He had been one of the first to put on a mask and had not bleed a lot. But the blood covered many passengers closer to the back of the plane, he added.
Everyone descended a staircase leading to the tarmac. Nair was waiting to see ambulances, but said that even an ambulance driver was not waiting. Instead, the passengers huddled, stamped and waited on the buses to get to the terminal.
"Please, do not record anything!" a member of the crew shouted at Melissa Tixeira while she was filming the scene.
Nair said the passengers finally received medical treatment at the terminal. Five people were taken to a hospital and later released, according to Jet Airways.
Nair felt good, once back on the ground, and refused medical treatment to try to find another flight to Jaipur. But the incident had shaken and irritated him, and the initial explanations of the officials had little effect on his nerves.
"We regret the inconvenience to our customers," reads in a Jet Airways statement on the reversal of the flight, without mentioning the loss of load.
The Department of Civil Aviation said that the 9W 697 flight crew had been taken out of service and that an investigation had been opened.
"During the climb, [the] the crew forgot to select [a] switch to keep the pressure in the cabin, "said Deputy Director General Lalit Gupta at the Hindustan Times.
This story was first published in the Washington Post.
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