Horror jet engine explosion in US spurs memories of United Airlines Flight 811 for Kiwi survivor

A survivor of the United Airlines Flight 811 flight from Honolulu in 1989 says her own experience sprang to mind when she read about a woman being sucked out a passenger jet in the US.

Kiwi woman Beverley Thomas was on the Auckland-bound United Airlines Flight 811 when the cargo door opened.

New Zealander Lee Campbell, were killed, but 346 people survived when the United Airlines Boeing 747 lost a cargo door on a Hawaii-Auckland flight.

The door swung wide, the fuselage peeled back, and nine passengers were sucked to their deaths.

The jet, with a huge hole blown out of its side, made an emergency landing at Honolulu.

Thomas was sitting six rows behind the door.

Twenty-nine years later, Thomas told the Herald she still thinks about the ordeal every day.

A story today about a woman being partially sucked out of a passenger jet, and pulled back in by other passengers - after their jet's engine exploded and shattered a window, spurred such memories this morning.

The woman survived the initial horror with critical head injuries but later died in hospital after the plane made an emergency landing.

"I heard it on the early news, and I've since read about it on my little iPad," Thomas said.

While it jogged her memory of her own experience back in 1989, Thomas said the fact that the victim was sucked half way out the window, then pulled back by other passengers, made it quite different.

The gaping hole in the plane, which managed to land back at Honolulu. PHOTO/HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER

"The people that were sucked out of our plane, except for one woman who actually went into the engine, they disappeared, never to be found again," she said.

"They obviously went down into the sea."

"The people sitting in the middle section right opposite them never saw them go out, it all happened in a flash.

"It was just 'bang' - hole in the plane and they had disappeared."

Campbell was one of those killed on Flight 811. The New Zealander had been returning home but never made it back.

His parents Kevin and Susan Campbell investigated the cause of the decompression independently.

They found the cause of the incident was the combination of an electrical problem and inadequate aircraft design

Thomas said an official investigation found an electrical malfunction caused the cargo door to open and rip off.

"It took 9 people, and their seats, with it," she said.

"They were strapped in their seats still, but they never ever found any of them."

The memory was something that would never leave her, Thomas said.