Jetliner Rips Open; 11 Die : 747 Lands Safely in Hawaii; About 340 Others on Plane Survive : 10-by-40 Foot Hole in Fuselage

A gaping hole ripped open on the right side of a United Airlines jumbo jet carrying 354 people today, sucking eight to 11 passengers to their death 20,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, authorities said.

The pilot brought the Boeing 747 back safely for an emergency landing, despite the failure of two of the four engines. At least 17 passengers were injured.

The damaged airliner was Flight 811 to New Zealand and Australia that had originated in San Francisco and included a stop in Los Angeles.

Initial reports had referred to an explosion aboard the Boeing 747, but later indications suggested structural failure might have been responsible. The pilot and some passengers described hearing an explosion, while others described a hissing sound and a “tearing away of the plane.”

10-by-40 Foot Hole

National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman Drucella Andersen said the jet had left Honolulu International Airport with 336 passengers and 18 crew members at 1:53 a.m. (3:53 a.m. PST) for Auckland, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia. It returned 40 minutes later with a 10-by-40 foot vertical hole in its right side.

“You could drive an ambulance through it; you could see the seats and the baggage compartment from the outside,” said Ray Mews, a photographer for KGMB-TV.

Passengers gave differing accounts of how the hole originated.

Rochelle Perel, 48, of Beverly Hills, who was sitting next to the seats that blew away, said, “There was kind of a hissing sound, like air and then a tearing away of the plane. It didn’t sound like an explosion. It sounded more like the plane coming apart and a large section of the aircraft on the right side just blew away with the passengers in those seats with it.”

Earrings Sucked Loose

Max Thompson of Denver said his wife, Sherry Peterson, a passenger on the plane, told him by telephone: “Our plane just blew up over Hawaii.”

“She said it was like a very loud pop, like you would pop a paper bag. Four rows of seats were just gone. It even sucked her earrings off,” Thompson said, adding that his wife was uninjured.

“The people who were sitting adjacent to us next to the window . . . there was, I’d say, near six or eight of them were blown out the plane with the hole and we were sitting about a foot-and-a-half, two feet from the hole,” said passenger Gary Garber of Tarzana, who suffered minor injuries.

18 Inches From Death

Some of Garber’s fingers were broken. His wife, Diane, was uninjured. Both were seated in the business-class section of the plane.

“The aisle seats right adjacent to us are what got hit. We were about 18 inches from flying out the plane ourselves,” Garber said.

Beverley Nisbet, 50, of Hastings, New Zealand, was returning home from a trip to Britain and Hawaii.

“The hostesses had announced they would be bringing drinks around, and at that moment, I heard a muffled explosion and the wall blew away,” she said. “Debris was everywhere. My initial reaction was this was it. I’m not going home.

“I thought it might be a bomb and I was waiting for a second one to finish us off,” she said.

No Foul Play Indicated

Robert Heafner, a Honolulu FBI spokesman, said agents were on the scene interviewing passengers and examining the damaged plane.

“There is no indication of any type of foul play,” Heafner said. “At this point we can’t confirm or deny that there was any kind of explosive.”

Barbara Abels, an FAA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said “the pilot experienced what he thought was an explosion. There was a hole in the right side cargo compartment.”

Abels said eight to 11 passengers were believed missing from the plane.

At least 65 passengers were believed to have boarded the aircraft in Los Angeles on Thursday night, but a United spokesman said none of those passengers who left at 8:15 p.m. was believed to be among the missing.

Right Engines Fail

Both the plane’s right engines had failed, apparently losing power after the fuselage was ripped open, according to JoAnn DeCampra, a dispatcher at Honolulu’s airport.

Boeing spokesman John Wheeler in Seattle said the plane was a 747-100, delivered in November, 1970. “That’s not very old in terms of the 747,” he said.

Boeing was sending a two-man team to assist NTSB investigators, Wheeler said.

Airport security put the passengers in a roped-off area in the terminal. Passengers were lying on the terminal floor on airline pillows and blankets. One man had an ice pack on his head and one wore a life jacket. Others formed a long line at telephones to call relatives.

Hospitals in the area treated at least 16 passengers, mostly for minor injuries. But a 49-year-old woman was in guarded condition in intensive care at Queen’s Medical Center with cervical and abdominal injuries.

Coast Guard Search

A Coast Guard helicopter and search plane scoured the area 100 miles south of Honolulu “for any debris, any survivors that might be there,” said Coast Guard spokesman Dave Goff.

FAA spokesman John Leyden in Washington said the pilot reported losing power in one right-side engine nine minutes after takeoff and eight minutes later radioed he had lost power in the other right-side engine. He then returned to Honolulu.

Leyden said he did not know how the hole in the fuselage and the engine trouble were related.

“There are a lot of possible scenarios,” he said, noting that it could have been a “contained engine failure,” in which an engine part penetrates the fuselage. Or, he said, an explosion from the fuselage could affect the engines.

Last April 28, a flight attendant was killed and 61 people were injured when a portion of the fuselage on a Boeing 737 peeled off during an Aloha flight from Hilo to Honolulu, exposing the first-class section to the open air at 24,000 feet.