Moments of terror, anxiety and anguish were experienced by Kelly Manuela Cifuentes, who was part of the 147 passengers traveling on Latam airlines flight 4292, who suffered an emergency in the front of the plane and He had to make an emergency landing at the José María Córdova airport, while on the Medellín-Cartagena route.
The woman, the mother of a 1-year-old baby, said that the saying “what starts badly ends badly” applies to the flight. Before starting the flight there were already delays, because although it was scheduled for 10:58 in the morning, it was already 1 in the afternoon and it had not yet taken off. But the first suspicion was when the plane landed, after presenting a delay in Pereira, because seven or eight technicians were present on the runway around the nose gear of the plane.
The boarding would have been quick and after takeoff the worst moment occurred, when after being in the air for 17 minutes they received a warning that the plane was having a mechanical failure. Then, it was 20 more minutes flying over the airport, Cifuentes said.
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“They told us that the flight was going to be cancelled, at that moment another girl arrives, after three minutes and tells us that it is time to board. They board all of us who were there and when we had been in the air for 17 minutes, the warning that the plane is having a mechanical failure. I have a one and a half year old baby, that is, there were many children, there were 5 or 6 babies in arms, there were elderly people… That was impressive ” .
What followed were a series of recommendations such as tying seat belts and having a fetal position, as well as how to protect children: 20 minutes of anxiety, as the woman describes it. “They informed us that it was because they needed to use up the gasoline they had tanked to avoid an explosion if we crashed when landing. It was very traumatic.”
As also highlighted by users on social networks, the pilot’s work was decisive in ensuring that the incident was not a tragedy, although the woman criticized the airline for carrying out this flight with alleged previous failures.
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“The pilot took everything with the seriousness of the case because the truth literally saved us, if it had not been for the maneuvers he carried out, we would not be telling the story. There was also very good attention from the flight attendants, but it was total negligence for them to see a flight with problems and carry them out.”
The passenger added that, although she tried to remain calm the whole time, for her son, when she landed she burst into tears. At that time, two people got on board to provide first aid and there was only one bus to transport passengers to the designated area of the airport. She was traveling with her family to celebrate her husband’s birthday in Barú, so they stayed with the reservations made.
