JAKARTA – AirAsia offered an apology on Monday over a technical problem experienced by one of its planes during a flight from Perth to Denpasar on Sunday night, forcing it to return to Perth after a 25-minute flight.
“AirAsia apologises for the inconvenience,” AirAsia Group’s safety head Ling Liong Tien said in a press statement, adding that all passengers had been flown on another flight to Denpasar and that the airline had provided all necessary assistance.
The pilot managed to land flight QZ535 at Perth Airport at 12:20 a.m. local time, Ling said, as reported by kompas.com, adding that the plane was carrying 151 passengers.
He also thanked the pilot and copilot for landing the plane safely.
Previously, The Sydney Morning Herald news portal reported that the passengers described how they were instructed to adopt the brace position and use their oxygen masks.
A technical problem caused the aircraft to plunge from 32,000 feet to 10,000 ft without warning.
A passenger reportedly said people thought they would die. “The masks dropped and everybody started panicking. Nobody told us what was going on,” the female passenger said.
