CNN) - Getting caught napping on
the job is never good. Getting caught napping on the job in the cargo hold of a
plane takes it to a whole different level.
Alaska Airlines Flight 448 was
just barely on its way to Los Angeles from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
on Monday afternoon when the pilot reported hearing unusual banging from the
cargo hold.
"There could be a person in
there so we're going to come back around," he told air traffic control.
The banging in the cargo hold did
come from a person and he turned out to be a ramp agent from Menzies Aviation,
a contractor for Alaska Airlines that handles loading the luggage, the airline
said. The man told authorities he had fallen asleep.
It appears he was never in any
danger.
The cargo hold is pressurized and
temperature controlled, the airline said. The plane was also only in the air
for 14 minutes.
What's that noise?
The passengers knew something
wasn't right, almost as soon as the plane took off.
"All of a sudden we heard
all this pounding underneath the plane and we thought there was something wrong
with the landing gear," Robert Higgins told CNN affiliate KABC
The pounding grew louder.
"At that point, we started
hearing yelling, screams for help, very, very faint," Jamie Davis said.
"That's when we notified the flight attendant that there was somebody
underneath us."
As the banging continued, a
federal air marshal sprang into action.
"At some point, the marshal
kind of made himself known," said Troi Ge. "He started banging back,
and he yelled really loud and said, 'We're getting ready to land, hold on to
something.'"
Emergency landing
The emergency landing spooked the
folks aboard Flight 448.
Affiliate KOMO spoke to Marty
Collins, another one of the passengers.
"We just took off for L.A.
regular and then ... about five minutes into the flight the captain came on and
said we were going back and we'd land within five to seven minutes, and we
did," Collins said. "When we landed was when all the trucks and the
police and the fire trucks surrounded the plane."
"I think it's scary and
really unsafe, too," Chelsie Nieto told affiliate KCPQ. "Because what
if it's someone who could have been a terrorist?"
Under investigation
The ramp agent appeared to be in
OK after the ordeal.
He was taken to an area hospital
as a precaution, the airline said. He passed a drug test and was discharged.
The employee started work at 5
a.m. and his shift was scheduled to end at 2:30 p.m., just before the flight
departed.
"During a pre-departure
huddle, the team lead noticed the employee was missing. The team lead called
into the cargo hold for the employee and called and texted the employee's cell
phone, but did not receive an answer. His co-workers believed he finished his
shift and went home," the airline's blog said.
Alaska Airlines said it's
investigating. The man had been on a four-person team loading baggage onto the
flight.
After the delay, the flight with
170 passengers and six crew members on board made it to Los Angeles early
Monday evening.
CNN's Greg Morrison contributed
to this report.
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