The rapid descent took place over Kentucky, near the Ohio state line, and lasted about five minutes, according to flightrader247.com.
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The airline would not confirm just how far the plane dropped during the Sunday morning flight, but it was indicated by the Indianapolis Airport Authority that the plane did indeed make 10,000 foot vertical drop.
A spokesman for ExpressJet, the operators of United Express, said they are looking into what happened. Beem said that was incorrect and told NBCNews that it was “standard procedure for planes to drop to a 10,000 foot altitude when there is a pressure issue on board”.
‘There was no unexpected drop’.
Jeff Dutton, who is the Communications Manager at Indianapolis Airport said that once the plane landed in Indianapolis the passengers were “checked out”, but no one needed to go to the hospital. The flight was operated by SkyWest.
The emergency landing was the second by a US commercial jet in less than two days after a Delta Airlines flight was hit by a hail storm that shattered its windscreen.
In July, United was forced to ground all flights for half a day due to a computer glitch that prevented people from checking in at the airport.
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The flight was scheduled to land at Chicago’s O’Hare Worldwide Airport at 7:55 a.m., Central time, however the crew found a mechanical drawback associated to cabin strain, . Check back for updates.
