Ok, so March 1988, I’m 15 years old, and my parents and I are going to Hawaii for my freshman year Spring Break. It’s a long flight. We flew from Newark, NJ to Dallas, TX. (3 hours.) Then Dallas to Honolulu. (8 hours.) Once at the Honolulu airport, the first thing you notice that it smells like flowers. Hawaii is almost unimaginably beautiful the first time you see it with your own eyes. I got to boogie board on Diamond Head Beach. Then we took an Aloha Airlines flight to Hilo on the Island of Hawaii. We took a tour up to the top of Kilauea Volcano, and it seemed like the surface of the moon. There was snow up there that’s how high we were. I don’t remember what the flight number was, but I know it was an Aloha Airlines 737.
Fast forward a month later, April 1988 and we see on the news at home that an Aloha Airlines 737 had an unexpected emergency in the air. At 24000 feet the plane suffered an “explosive decompression,” and part of the top of the plane blew off in mid air, leaving some of the passengers exposed like they were in a convertible. Once flight attendant was sucked out and obviously never found. The plane managed to land safely and the flight attendant was the only casualty.
I can’t prove if I was on that plane or not, because I don’t know if they used more than one plane on the Honolulu to Hilo route. But I imagine it was highly likely that there was only one, and I was on it the month before.
The accident was blamed on poor maintenance and metal fatigue. I went on to finish the 9th grade.
