Sunday, March 7, 2004 Posted: 7:54 PM EST (0054 GMT)
Los Angeles (Los Angeles Times) -- Ted Airlines had been doing great. Business was booming, stock prices were rising. With planes flying out of more than 500 airports across the country the airline was raking in the profits. Primary shareholder Ted had just bought another mansion (his 23rd).
But on Tuesday afternoon tragedy struck. One of the airline's planes went down in flames over Hawaii.
It started out as a routine flight with many of the passengers enjoying the complementary TedVision (cable TV) that is standard with all airplanes that are part of the airline. About 10 minutes after take off a disgruntled monorail conductor from Seattle suffered a mental break down.
When the flight attendant came to offer him a drink he was reported to have been muttering and playing with the spoon that had come with his soup. He turned to the flight attendant and threw his steaming hot soup in her face. She fell back screaming into another row of seats.
The man, Robert Johnson, then opened up the rack above him and pulled out his suitcase. He then pulled a ballpoint pen from his pocket and charged down the aisle stabbing his pen around as though it were a knife and swing his suitcase at the people sitting in the aisles. When he got to the front of the plane he pulled the emergency latch on the boarding door. The door swung open and the cabin began to rapidly depressurize. Robert was nearly sucked from the airplane, but managed to hold on to the door to the cockpit. His suitcase was wretched from his grip and flew from the airplane and was sucked into the engine causing it to ignite.
Co-pilot Tom Miller came out from the cockpit to see what had happened. He came out just in time to see Robert scream wildly about losing his suitcase full of pants and dive out the open hatch. Tom and another flight attendant managed to shut the door just a few moments later.
However, with one engine having been taken out by suitcase of pants the other engine was straining to keep the plane flying. The strain became too much and the engine erupted into flames as well. The plane came in for a crash landing on Maui. The passengers and crew were able to escape before the plane was consumed in flames.
This shocking event is a may be a hammer blow for the airline, but the airline's chairman remains confident and says "We will not let the acts of a madman deter this company's progress."
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