Pilot accidentally tells passengers "we're going down" over PA

By JD

(CNN) — As his plane made a rapid descent to normalize cabin pressure, a Southwest Airlines pilot went on the plane’s loudspeaker and apparently told passengers the aircraft was going down. ”At first it sounded like someone was coming over the PA to talk. Then it sounded like shots through the cabin, twice, back to back,” passenger Grace Stroud told CNN. “Seconds later, the panicked captain said, ‘We’re in trouble; we’re going down.’”

The flight attendants then began securing the bins, she told “CNN Newsroom” in a separate interview. One told the captain to deploy the oxygen masks.  ”I’m sure everybody went through their private moments,” Stroud said. “My moment was, ‘OK, so this is how I’m going to die,’ and ‘At least it will be quick.’” Another passenger, Shelley Wills, told CNN affiliate WTVD that the pilot made the remarks as the plane went into a nosedive when it neared the Raleigh-Durham International Airport. “He said, ‘We’re going down.’ And everyone is looking around like, ‘Is this a joke? Is he serious?’ And then you felt the nosedive.” Soon after, the Boeing 737 leveled out and made an emergency landing at the Raleigh airport.

At the surface it might look like this pilot is the butt of this joke because he fucked up and had the loudspeaker on and didn’t know it, but really that’s what makes it so brilliant, I think. It’s pretty obvious that what happened here was that the pilot wanted his co-pilot to confess to something, so he pretended the plane was going down. Who knows what it was, doesn’t matter. But when a plane’s goin down and there’s mass chaos in the cabin, you let it all pour out – fess up for shit you always thought you’d take to the grave. At least I think that’s what I’d do for some reason. 

Plus, even though everyone on the flight heard you panicking over the PA, at the end of the day you’re still the guy that saved all of them from nosediving into the Atlantic. Hero status. Pure genius when you think about it.