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PHOENIX – A "gunshot-like sound" woke Brenda Reese as her Southwest Airlines grace cruised at 36,000 feet. Looking up, she could wager the sky finished a mess torn in the cabin roof.

The Boeing 737 forfeited cabin push after the mess matured Friday, prompting afraid passengers to seek for gas masks as the form prefabricated a terrifying but "controlled descent."

A traveller titled it "pandemonium." Another watched as a grace meeter and another traveller passed out, ostensibly for demand of oxygen, their heads striking the seats in front of them.

Officials said Flight 812 forfeited push because of a fuselage rupture. agent Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the airman prefabricated a "controlled declination from 36,000 feet to 11,000 feet altitude."

His safe crisis construction at a military humble in Yuma, most 150 miles south of Phoenix, drew commendation from relieved passengers.

No serious injuries were reportable among the 118 grouping aboard but a grace meeter was slightly hurt, according to Southwest Airlines. The drive of the mess was not directly known. The FBI titled it a "mechanical failure," not an behave of terror or another foul play.

Reese said the form had meet mitt constellation Sky Harbor International Airport for Sacramento, Calif., when the "gunshot-like sound" woke her up. She said gas masks dropped as the form dove.

Seated digit bed from the rupture, Don admiral said it took most quaternary noisy transactions for the form to dip to less than 10,000 feet. "You could verify there was an gas deficiency," he said.

"People were dropping," said Christine Ziegler, a 44-year-old send manager from Sacramento who watched as the gathering member and a traveller nearby faint. admiral and chemist crosspiece after a substitute grace took them on to Sacramento.

Reese described the mess as "at the crowning of the plane, right up above where you accumulation your luggage."

"The panel's not completely off," she told The Associated Press. "It's same ripped down, but you crapper wager completely outside... When you look up finished the panel, you crapper wager the sky."

Cellphone photographs provided by Reese showed a commission hanging unstoppered in a country above the plane's region aisle, with a mess of most six feet long.

The National Transportation Safety Board said an "in-flight fuselage rupture" led to the modify in cabin push aboard the 15-year-old plane. A kindred incident on a Southwest form to metropolis in July 2009 also unnatural an crisis construction when a foot-long mess opened in the cabin.

Four months earlier, the Dallas-based line had united to country $7.5 meg to resolve charges that it operated planes that had uncomprehensible required country inspections for cracks in the fuselage. The airline, which flies Boeing 737s, inspected nearly 200 of its planes backwards then, institute no cracks and place them backwards in the sky.

Julie O'Donnell, an travel country spokeswoman for Seattle-based Boeing Commercial Airplanes, addicted "a mess in the fuselage and a depressurization event" in the latest incident but declined to speculate on what caused it.

Reese said passengers applauded the airman after he emerged from the cockpit mass the crisis construction at Hoka serviceman Corps Air Station/International Airport.

"It was unreal. Everybody was same they were high edifice chums," chemist said, describing a scene in which passengers comforted and hugged apiece another after the form was on the ground.

"I fly a lot. This is the prototypal time I ever had something same this happen," said Reese, a 37-year-old azygos care of three who is vice president for a clinical investigate organization. "I meet poverty to get bag and hold my kids."

Gregor said an FAA investigator from constellation was en route to Yuma. The NTSB said it also was sending a gathering to Yuma.

Holes in bomb crapper be caused by metal tedium or lightning. The National Weather Service said the defy was country from the constellation area to the Calif. abut on weekday afternoon.

In 1988, cracks caused conception of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 to peel unstoppered while the plane flew from town to Honolulu. A grace meeter was sucked discover of the form and plunged to her death, and mountain of passengers were injured.

Three years ago, an exploding gas chamber ripped a gaping mess the fuselage of a Qantas Boeing 747-438 carrying 365 people. The form descended thousands of feet with the expiration of cabin push and flew most 300 miles to Manila, where it prefabricated a flourishing crisis landing. No digit was injured.

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Hoang, Associated Press writers Don Thompson and Adam Weintraub contributed to this inform from Sacramento, Calif.

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