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An American Airlines passenger claims the plane's crew held a cracked door shut during a frightening mid-flight incident last week.
X user @jinworIdwide shared a post in which she claimed the flight, which was scheduled to land in Mexico City, diverted back to Los Angeles International Airport due to the emergency.
"American Airlines had to deplane us, and my boss heard the flight attendants say that there was a crack in the door, and they had to physically hold the door closed while they turned the plane back to LAX," she wrote.
A spokesperson for American Airlines told the U.S. Sun that the flight returned to LAX due to a "possible mechanical issue" and specified that it landed safely and taxied to the gate before departing to its destination hours later, though not commenting on whether flight crew members held the plane door shut.
"We never want to disrupt our customer's travel plans and apologize for the inconvenience," American Airlines said in the statement obtained by the U.S. Sun.
A video shared online in January showed the door of a commercial airplane open mid-flight, causing luggage to be sucked out of the cabin. Sergei Lidrik, 33, captured the footage from the IrAero An-26 twin-prop plane, East2West News reported via the New York Post.
The video shows Lidrik and other passengers braving freezing temperatures as several hats and pieces of luggage were sucked through the opened door.
The plane took off from a remote Siberian city of Magan in -41-degree Celsius temperatures and was scheduled to land in Magadan, but was instead forced to turn back around and make an emergency landing at its original location.