
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 5, 1990                   TAG: 9003052020
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                 LENGTH: Short

ALL SAFE AFTER JET DROPS 25,000 FEET

American Airlines Flight 40 from Los Angeles to New York suddenly lost cabin pressure and went into a steep, controlled dive Sunday, dropping 25,000 feet in several minutes. No one was injured, an airline official said, but passengers on board said they thought they were going to crash.

The dive began after a valve that controls cabin pressure broke, said an American Airlines spokesman, John Hotard.

Hotard said the captain then received permission from air traffic controllers to drop 10,000 to 37,000 feet, so that no pressurization would be needed.

Several passengers said they saw smoke and smelled something burning, but airline officials and the Federal Aviation Administration said there was no smoke and no fire aboard.

Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the FAA, said what looked like smoke might have been condensation.

"Baloney," said Alan Geller of Los Angeles, one of the 263 passengers aboard the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10. "There was definitely a cloud of smoke in there. It wasn't condensation. I was breathing it."

Geller said the problems began when he heard a loud popping sound, followed by freezing temperatures and what he took to be smoke. Oxygen masks came down, food and carry-on luggage scattered, and the plane began diving, he said.

"I figured it's over," he said.

Another passenger, Tom Noonan of New York City, also said he saw and smelled smoke. "It was a madhouse, going into a steep dive, with people screaming and everybody grabbing for oxygen masks."

by CNB