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Videos shared online show a terrifying scene that took place after a passenger opened the emergency door on an Asiana Airlines flight while descending for landing in South Korea.
The man, identified as an individual in his 30s by Yonhap news agency, was arrested after the plan landed, BBC.com reports. All 194 passengers survived the incident on Flight OZ8124, despite the door remaining open even after it landed at Daegu International Airport on Friday (May 26).
The Airbus A321-200 jet was reported to have departed from Jeju Island at around 11:45 local time and scheduled to land about an hour later when the man opened the emergency door as it was just over 800 feet above ground.
A video captured by a passenger showed a gap in the left hand side of the plane allowing strong winds to hit several rows of seated travelers. Flight attendants were unable to stop the suspect from opening the door as they were seated in position for the plane's landing, a witness said on social media via BBC.com.
The man was reported to have attempted to jump out of the plane after opening the door, which was unsuccessful.
"It was chaos with people close to the door appearing to faint one by one and flight attendants calling out for doctors on board through broadcasting," a 44-year-old passenger told Yonhap via BBC.com.
"I thought the plane was blowing up. I thought I was going to die like this," he added.
Several young children were reported to be on board the flight during the incident.
"The children were shaking, crying, and frightened," a mother of one of the children told Yonhap via BBC.com.
Earlier this year, a video shared online showed the door of a commercial airplane open mid-flight, causing luggage to be sucked out of the cabin. Sergei Lidrik, 33, captured the footage from the IrAero An-26 twin-prop plane, East2West News reported via the New York Post.
The video shows Lidrik and other passengers braving freezing temperatures as several hats and pieces of luggage were sucked through the opened door. The plane took off from a remote Siberian city of Magan in -41-degree Celsius temperatures and was scheduled to land in Magadan, but was instead forced to turn back around and make an emergency landing at its original location.