Seoul, South Korea CNN –
As video of the incident shows, the door of an Asiana Airlines plane opened as it was about to land in Daegu, South Korea on Friday afternoon, sending a wind whipping through the plane’s cabin while frightened passengers clutched their armrests.
An airline official said a man in his 30s sitting in the jump seat appeared to have opened the door when the plane was about 700 feet (213 meters) off the ground and about two to three minutes before landing in the city 150 miles away. 240 kilometers) south of Seoul.
However, company officials told CNN that the plane landed safely.
Local police said a man had been arrested. They said he confessed to opening the door but would not say why he did it.
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement that the police and ministry are investigating an individual for violating aviation law.
According to Asiana Airlines, there were a total of 200 people on board, including 194 passengers.
According to the Daegu Fire Department, twelve people suffered minor injuries from hyperventilation and nine of them were taken to hospitals in Daegu.
The aircraft was identified as an Airbus 321 on the Flightradar 24 tracking website.
The jet was on a flight from Jeju Island, off the south coast of South Korea, to Daegu.
Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas of Airline Ratings described the incident as “very bizarre”.
“Technically it’s not possible to open these doors in flight,” he told CNN.
Thomas found that the landing speed of an A321 is about 150 knots (172 miles per hour), meaning winds at that speed will blow past the aircraft. The door behind the plane’s wing opened into that airflow, he said.
“It seems unlikely that the door could be opened at all and then it was technically impossible to open against the wind, but somehow it happened,” said Thomas.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it had dispatched a flight safety officer to the site to check if there was an anomaly in aircraft maintenance.
This is an evolving story