Something is going on. Akron native, ESPN insider recounts dramatic plane landing

Omaha, Nebraska, to Los Angeles is a roughly 3½-hour flight, but on Oct. 20, American Airlines flight 6469 landed after an abrupt 18 minutes, returning to Omaha.

The fast U-turn flight ended after pilots misplaced communication with the flight attendants and feared that the banging on the cockpit door was a signal that somebody was attempting to break into the cockpit.

“About 10 minutes into the flight, all of a sudden, we took a very hard U-turn,” ESPN reporter and former Beacon Journal sports activities reporter Brian Windhorst recounted on The Hoop Collective podcast. “We are turning around, going east, and we are no longer going up. So, I’m like, something is going on.”

Looking up from his seat, Windhorst noticed the flight attendants at the cockpit door speaking. Then Windhorst heard fast knocking. He noticed one flight attendant decide up the cellphone to the cockpit.

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“For a split second, I wondered if there was something going on in the cockpit, but then I realized that we were descending, it’s OK,” Windhorst told his co-hosts.

Without warning, the landing gear dropped, forcing flight attendants to run to their seats.

Police encompass the airplane on landing

The flight had taken off at 6:41 p.m. local time, according to FlightConscious, a flight monitoring web site. By about 7 p.m., it was on the ground.

During that time, passengers had been left without an rationalization, Windhorst said. No one announced the choice to flip around.

Windhorst deduced that the plane itself was not the issue, noting that there was no smoke or “funny noises.” The cabin appeared high quality, so he puzzled if a pilot had a medical emergency.

Landing without any points, Windhorst regarded out the window and noticed emergency lights dotting the runway. He then noticed police officers and cruisers encompass the plane.

“This is not a medical thing now,” he recalled. “But there is nothing happening in the cabin, and there is still no announcement.”

Three officers entered the plane. Two went to the cockpit, and the third requested if everybody was OK.

“I’m like, ‘You tell me. We’re fine,'” Windhorst said before chuckling.

Then, a pilot opened the door.

So, why did the pilots ground the plane?

Windhorst said the issue boiled down to a downside with the flight crew’s microphone, which American Airlines and SkyWest confirmed.

Flight attendants unintentionally left the microphone open, so the pilots heard static, Windhorst explained. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a media assertion that “there was a problem with the interphone system.”

“(The pilots) were trying to get a hold of the flight attendants. They said they tried to at least eight times,” Windhorst said.

When the flight attendants began banging on the cockpit door, the pilots feared somebody was attempting to break into the cockpit, he explained. The pilots, he said, declared an emergency and told air visitors control, triggering a police response.

Despite a dramatic 20 minutes, no one was injured. When the flight took off, it was roughly 5 hours late.

Bryce Buyakie covers courts and public security for the Beacon Journal. He might be reached by electronic mail at bbuyakie@gannett.com or on X, previously identified as Twitter, @bryce_buyakie.

This article initially appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Brian Windhorst of Akron, ESPN remembers sudden airplane landing