Plane Rips Open in Midair; 9 Die : 18 Injured on Flight to New Zealand; Pilot Coaxs 747 Back to Honolulu

A gaping 10-by-20-foot rectangular hole ripped open on the right side of a United Airlines jumbo jet carrying 355 people to New Zealand early Friday, sucking nine passengers to presumed death 20,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean and injuring 18 others.

The incident, which a number of passengers said felt like an explosion, occurred 20 to 30 minutes after the jet left Honolulu International Airport. Despite the fact that two of the plane’s four engines subsequently failed, the jet’s veteran pilot was able to fly 50 miles back to Honolulu, where he made an emergency landing.

Although federal officials said it was too early to rule out foul play, most aviation experts said they believed the incident was not a case of sabotage.

Baggage Door Blows Off

However, there was no immediate explanation for why the side baggage door of the Boeing 747 blew off beneath the ninth row of the main cabin, exposing the airplane’s business-class section to a sudden change in cabin pressure that pulled passengers into the darkened sky and exposed the rest of the plane to a chill nightmare of noise, debris and dust.

Speculation centered on the possibility of a failed cargo door lock, a structural failure in the fuselage, or the possibility that an explosion in an engine had caused a part of the engine to pierce the fuselage.

After a cargo door on another Boeing 747 partially opened in flight because of a damaged lock last year, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to improve door-lock systems on older Boeing 747s. That work had yet to be performed on the jet used on Flight 811, but United officials noted that the FAA-imposed deadline is not until Dec. 31, 1989.

All those who died Friday were passengers. They were identified by the airline as Anthony and Barbara Fallon, Long Beach; Lee Campbell, Wellington, New Zealand; Susan and Harry Craig, Morsetown, N.J.; Dr. John Michael Crawford, Sydney, Australia; Mary Handley, Bay City, Mich.; Rose Harley, Hackensack, N.J., and John Swann, Sydney.

United Airlines’ corporate headquarters in Chicago declined Friday night to provide the full list of 336 passengers, 15 flight attendants, three crew members and one non-working crew member on board United Flight 811.

The flight is United’s most direct to Auckland, New Zealand, from San Francisco. Passengers left San Francisco in a 727 at 6 p.m. Thursday for Los Angeles. Those traveling to Honolulu or New Zealand changed to the ill-fated 747 in Los Angeles. The second leg to Honolulu was completed uneventfully.

Survivors described moments of surreal terror--first, the shocking jolt, then their fear that the plane would crash into the ocean before it wobbled back to the airport.

“It was horrible,” said Paul Hotz, a 35-year-old Australian fashion designer flying home to Sydney after a business trip in Los Angeles and New York with his wife, Susan, their daughter and a friend, who were sitting close to the hole. “All of a sudden the man seated next to Susan just disappeared.”

Flight Attendant Hurt

“The stewardess who’d been serving drinks was knocked down, bleeding profusely. I thought we were all going to die. I locked my legs around her (the attendant) so she couldn’t be blown out. When we landed I carried her out,” Hotz said.

“The noise and the wind were horrific. We tried to shout, but we couldn’t hear each other. We managed to put on our life jackets.”

There were no intercom instructions from the stewardesses. They could not have been heard over the din that swept in.

“A stewardess came by with a (battery-powered) megaphone and told us to get into the landing position,” said Susan Hotz, 37. “I thought the impact when we landed would break the plane in two.”

Arm in a Sling

The couple talked quietly in a Honolulu hotel room 10 hours later after their ordeal. Paul Hotz’s cut and bruised arm was in a sling. He couldn’t remember how he hurt it. His wife’s wrist was bruised. With them was a traveling companion, Kerry Lappan, 31, who remembered a poignant moment.

“The whole plane was falling in pieces from the wind. The whole plane was starting to shake. I thought, ‘This is it.’ But there was a man in front of me. I don’t know who it was. A wonderful, wonderful man. He held my hand and he comforted me. It was so lovely to have someone’s hand to hold.”

Flight 811 represented the third time in less than 10 months that a jet manufactured by Boeing Co. has incurred midair fuselage damage.

Last April 28, a flight attendant was killed and 61 persons injured when a portion of the fuselage on a Boeing 737 peeled off during an Aloha Airlines flight from Hilo to Honolulu, exposing the first-class section to the open air at 24,000 feet. Passengers reported hearing a blast and then being hit with a tremendous rush of air. The pilot and co-pilot managed to land the crippled jet 13 minutes later in Maui, although one of the two engines quit. Tiny cracks were found later in nearly half the aging Boeing 737 jetliners inspected in the months after the Aloha accident.

Forced to Land

Last December an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 with 104 passengers and six crew aboard was forced to land at Yeager Airport in Charleston, W.Va., after a 14-inch hole opened in its fuselage at 31,000 feet.

Flight 811 left Honolulu for Auckland at 3:34 a.m. PST. It had climbed to 19,800 feet approximately a half-hour later when passengers heard a cracking sound “and the hole just opened,” Susan Hotz said. “It was just a hole, just nothing.”

Some airplane seats as well as passengers were sucked through the hole. Those passengers who were swept into space would likely have maintained consciousness for at least a minute if they were not knocked out by the force of the experience, an Air Force spokesman said.

But one or more met a grislier fate. When staff members of the Honolulu Medical Examiner inspected one of the damaged engines, they found what Deputy Medical Examiner Mary Flynn described as “multiple small body fragments.”

The jet’s captain, David Cronin, a 34-year veteran of United based in Los Angeles, soon radioed the Honolulu airport, reporting the apparent explosion and a subsequent loss of power in one of his four engines, a National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman said.

Ambulances Sent

Cronin, descending rapidly to 4,400 feet and dumping his fuel into the ocean, asked Honolulu airport officials for all available emergency equipment, federal and airport officials said. Four trucks of crash equipment and ambulances were on a main runway when he returned, landing at 4:33 a.m., blowing out several tires in the process.

Numerous passengers, who applauded upon landing, praised Cronin’s performance. A United spokesman at the airline’s headquarters in Chicago called it “heroic.”

One side of the airplane looked completely normal. The other was a shambles.

The second right-side engine had been turned off by Cronin when an engine-fire indicator activated.

The hole in the plane “was huge. You could drive a car through it,” marveled one passenger, Paul Grigson, who was heading home to Australia, where he works as a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald.

The survivors quickly scrambled down emergency chutes, with several of them suffering cinder burns and skin scrapes in the process. For 40 minutes, passengers said, they were left to wander the tarmac. Then airport security personnel confined them to a roped-off area in the terminal for eight hours, where they were questioned by FBI agents. Many lay on the terminal floor on airline pillows and blankets. One man had an ice pack on his head. One wore a life jacket. Others formed a long line at telephones to call relatives.

Authorities said 18 people were taken to four Honolulu hospitals. Most were treated and released. Five were admitted. The most serious injuries were broken bones and head cuts.

United Airlines and Red Cross and civil defense officials arranged hotel rooms for those passengers who would not continue their journeys by Friday night.

Normal airport operations continued during the crises and landing, officials said.

Structural Failure Suspected

In Washington, Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of a House aviation subcommittee, said preliminary information indicated that the accident was caused by structural problems, not a bomb.

“I think you would be looking at internal structural failure along the fuselage,” Oberstar said.

Oberstar, who was briefed on the incident by aviation officials, said maintenance workers may have failed to identify a weakness along the rivet lines, although he emphasized that United has a very good maintenance program.

Arthur Wolk, a Philadelphia aviation expert, suggested that the hole may have been caused when a blade from one of the plane’s engines ripped into the fuselage.

‘Inadequate Containment’

Wolk also said the plane’s design had “inadequate containment. . . . There’s no way the hole should have become so big.”

Boeing and Pratt & Whitney of Hartford, Conn., the manufacturer of the plane’s engines, sent investigators to Honolulu. Boeing said it was checking records to determine how many takeoff-landing cycles the plane had, as well as any records for heavy maintenance work on the plane.

A spokesman for Pratt & Whitney said the jetliner was equipped with a version of the Pratt & Whitney JT9D engine that was developed in the 1970s.

Boeing said the plane was delivered to United Airlines on Nov. 3, 1970. It was the 89th 747-100 built out of a total of 205. It was the sixth of that model delivered to United.

Team Sent In

Along with the FBI, the crash was being investigated by a 14-member National Transportation Safety Board team dispatched from Washington to Honolulu. The plane was towed to an inspection area at Hickam Air Force Base.

Three Coast Guard cutters and the Pearl Harbor-based USS Coronado teamed up to search an area encompassing 120 square miles about 102 miles south-southwest of Honolulu. Chief Petty Officer Dennis Hubbard said three helicopters also participated, and a Coast Guard plane scanned an area 10 times larger.

A Coast Guard cutter later found one large piece of corrugated metal and several smaller pieces of metal as well as an airplane seat cushion with an emergency landing card attached.

In Honolulu Friday, the general manager of a radio station told The Times he received a telephone call Jan. 23 from an individual who asked him to relay a demand to the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu that a Japanese Red Army figure be released by Friday--also the date of Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s funeral--or “there will be an accident (on) an American airline.”

The general manager, Danny Oshita, said that when he asked for the caller’s identity, the man hung up.

Oshita said he relayed the threat to the Japanese Consulate, which contacted the FBI. An FBI agent interviewed Oshita that night, and Oshita agreed to record any more calls if the man called again. He did not, Oshita said.

Oshita said the Japanese Consulate told him that the call may have been a hoax, because the caller did not identify himself as a member of the Japanese Red Army or other terrorist group, which the consulate said ran counter to usual practice.

A United spokesman declined to comment on Oshita’s story.

Times staff writers Patt Morrison, Tamara Jones, George Stein and Dan Morain contributed to this story.