A married couple sitting in the row immediately behind the blown-out door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month feared their dog would be sucked out through the hole as the plane shook and cold air filled the cabin.

“There was the loudest explosion,” Joan Marin said during a press conference Friday. “The wind, the noise, the roar. We were right behind the engine so you could really hear the noise coming through the door. We saw things flight out through this door.”

What You Need To Know

  • Joan and Gilbert Marin were on board Alaska Airlines flight 1282 when the door plug blew out midair

  • They recalled a loud explosion, cold air and the plane shaking

  • Seated one row behind the blown-out door plug with their dog, they feared their pet would be sucked out through the hole in the plane's fuselage

  • The Riverside, Calif., couple are confident they will recover but say their lives have changed

Two rows in front of them, they saw a young man’s hands “up in the air” as his cell phone was sucked through the opening, then his shirt. The Marins feared their 13-year-old dog Toby might be next, as he sat in a pet carrier at their feet.

“It had been zipped a little bit, but he was forcing his head, trying to get out of there. His eyes were bulging out,” Gilbert Marin said. “I could see it moving, and I didn’t know if it was going be sucked underneath the seat, so I grabbed him.”

As people were crying and moaning, the Marins held on to each other and to their dog, who resisted their attempts to strap on an oxygen mask.

“I was hugging my husband and my dog with my head down, and then I looked up and I saw that the seats A and B were empty,” Joan Marin said of the row right in front of them. “There was only somebody in C, and they had told us it was a full flight. All I could do was think somebody had got sucked out.”

They recalled a flight attendant walking to the row in front of them from the back of the plane, wearing an oxygen mask with a portable canister, to check on the passenger and ask if anyone had been seated immediately next to the door plug.

“For him to come up and yell, where everybody could hear, ‘was there somebody sitting there?’ The panic that struck everybody at that moment.”

The Marins were returning from visiting their daughter’s family in Connecticut on a connecting flight through Portland, Ore., when the door plug broke off the plane at 16,000 feet minutes after takeoff. Moments before, everything had been normal, Joan Marin recalled.

At 10,000 feet, the captain announced over the loudspeaker that beverage service would begin soon.

“Then there was the loudest explosion,” she said. The captain tried to communicate over the speaker system, but it was too loud for them to hear.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Joan Marin said. “Just looking out, looking out through the opening right there, I said, ‘where are we gonna land?’”

Thirteen harrowing minutes later, the plane landed at the same airport where it had taken off — in Portland. They had to take another flight to get home to Riverside, Calif.

They said they had only been back a couple hours when they received a call from Alaska Airlines offering them $1,500 each as compensation for their experience on board flight 1282.

They were also offered psychological evaluations but declined in favor of meeting with their own doctors. Joan Marin said the $1,500 Alaska Airlines offered did not cover their medical co-payments, but the couple does not intend to sue the airline or Boeing, as six other passengers have done as part of a class action lawsuit alleging emotional trauma.

“I know we’ll get better as the days go on, and hopefully return to normal,” Joan said, adding that she and her husband are still distraught and fear post-traumatic stress disorder. “Our lives have changed.”