By The Survivors Club Staff
July 14, 2009

The Survivors Club grew by 131 people last night when a Southwest Airlines plane made an emergency landing in West Virginia after a hole opened in the body of the plane and the cabin lost pressure.

Flight 2294 bound for Baltimore-Washington landed in Charleston, W.Va., about 50 minutes after its departure from Nashville, according to the Charleston Daily Mail.  No injuries were reported.

Passenger Brian Cunningham told NBC's Today show that he had dozed off in his seat when he was awakened by "the loudest roar I'd ever heard."

"There was no pop, no creak, no explosion-like noise," Cunningham went on.  "There was just a loud roar. It took me a couple of seconds to wake up. I got the baseball cap out of my face and I look up and there's the sun coming through the ceiling. ... I saw sky where I shouldn't be seeing it."

What caused the hole in the plane?  So far, experts are stumped, according to The Christian Science Monitor.  Metal fatigue and corrosion are immediate suspects.  They were both involved in the 1988 gash in an Aloha Airlines 737 that resulted in rapid decompression, killing one flight attendant (who was sucked out) and injuring 65 passengers and crew.

The loss of cabin pressure on Flight 2294 was detected about 30 minutes into the flight. Oxygen masks deployed and were used, and the plane descended to a safe altitude, McInnis said. Oxygen is usually needed above 10,000 feet.

Witnesses described the hole as the size of a football and located on the side of the airplane near the top.

Southwest Airlines ordered inspections of nearly 200 aircraft after a football-sized hole opened up in the passenger cabin of a plane during flight, forcing an emergency landing in West Virginia.

Fascinating Facts About Cabin Pressurization from Wikipedia:

• "The first airliner with a pressurized cabin was the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, built 1938, prior to World War II, though only ten were produced," according to Wikipedia.
• Wiki continues: "Rapid decompression of commercial aircraft is a rare, but dangerous event with American Airlines Flight 96 being an example. People seated close to a very large hole may be forced out by explosive decompression or injured by exiting debris and unsecured cabin objects that may become projectiles. However, contrary to Hollywood myth, as in the James Bond film Goldfinger, people just a few feet from the hole are more at risk from hypoxia or hypothermia than from being forced out. Floors and internal panels have deformed in previous incidents, consequently all modern commercial jets now have blow-out panels or vents between pressurized compartments of the plane, such as between the passenger and cargo spaces, to equalize destructive internal pressure differentials."
• "The Time of Useful Consciousness varies depending on the altitude," according to Wiki.  "Additionally, the air temperature will plummet to the ambient outside temperature with a danger of hypothermia or frostbite."