By JADA LEMOS
Staff Writer
On Saturday, February 20th, there was a loud boom aboard the United Flight 328 just after its takeoff. Some of the 241 passengers on the flight from Denver International Airport to Honolulu opened their windows to see an exposed engine spewing flames and pieces of the plane falling. Others closed their windows and prayed with their loved ones. Thousands of feet below in a Denver suburb, people on the ground ran to shelter to dodge the debris from the plane.
The pilots issued a mayday call and returned to the airport safely. There were no reports of injuries on either land nor air.
Travis Loock, a passenger on the plane, snapped a photo of the damaged engine. “There was a big boom and the kind of sound you don’t want to hear when you’re on the airplane,” Loock, who was flying with his wife, said in a phone call. “And I instantly put my shade up, and I was pretty frightened to see that the engine on my side was missing. We were just glad we weren’t over the ocean, because that’s where we were heading.”