It’s every passenger’s nightmare. You get on a flight, things seem to be going smoothly, then next thing you know, the plane is headed back towards Earth in a hurry.
That’s what happened to one man.
His 12 seconds of video showing a desert landscape outside his cabin window and a row of passengers sitting in yellow oxygen masks was alarming but short on details. It turned out that the Delta Air Lines flight he was on had left Los Angeles bound for Salt Lake City, lost cabin pressure over the Mojave Desert, and dropped most of the way to the ground before diverting into Las Vegas.
Jord Maynard (@jord.maynard5) posted the clip on Sept. 7. Since then it has drawn more than 142,400 views. His caption supplies a little of the detail the footage could not: “When your @delta flight from Los Angeles makes an emergency stop in Las Vegas due to system failures you could say the saxophones got a little loud as we went from 30,000 feet to 8,000 feet really quick.”
The flight was Delta 2311 from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC). Maynard identified it when a commenter asked for the number so they could pull the track.
What The Record Shows
The aircraft was a Boeing 737-900ER, registration N934DZ, carrying 181 people when the pressurisation failed at 35,000 feet. Air traffic control recordings reportedly capture one of the pilots requesting the descent without ceremony: “Delta 2311, currently rapid descent, we’d like to descend to 9,000.”
The jet came down roughly 27,000 feet in about 10 minutes and landed at Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), where passengers walked off safely and Delta found them another aircraft to finish the trip.
Delta says that the crew did what it was trained to do. In a statement, Delta reportedly said, “As safety comes before everything else at Delta, the flight crew of Delta flight 2311 LAX-SLC followed their training and procedures to safely bring the aircraft to optimal altitude when an unexpected pressurization issue occurred,” the airline said in a statement. The airline apologized to passengers and thanked the crew, but neither Delta nor any agency has said publicly what caused the failure.
The Descent Was The Procedure, Not The Emergency
One thing that alarmed some viewers is actually expected in this situation. The aircraft performed a steep descent to 10,000 feet, which is frightening, but is what federal regulations oblige them to do. The regulators calculate the flight crew’s required oxygen using “a constant rate of descent from the airplane’s maximum certificated operating altitude to 10,000 feet in ten minutes.”
The reason for the hurried descent is that cabin masks are not fed from tanks. One commenter, jmeklund, explained it to the thread: “There isn’t sufficient oxygen at cruising altitude so they descend to where there is enough, 10K feet. They need to do it fast because oxygen is important, and the chemical reaction that happens in the drop-down mask system lasts about 10-15 minutes.”
How Fast It Felt
Asked by thats_arron whether it was “like a fast drop out of the sky,” Maynard answered that the plane went “From 35,000 feet to 8,000 in about a minute.” The descent took closer to 10 minutes according to publicly available records on a flight leaving Los Angeles at 4.54pm Pacific Time on Sept. 6 and reaching Harry Reid 82 minutes later, the Salt Lake City leg marked diverted.
He also pushed back on commenters who said this was evidence that flying was unsafe. “To be fair, since 1950 this has happened less than 3,000 times, and there have been about 2 billion flights since then,” he wrote. The first number has a basis—a Federal Aviation Authority advisory committee studying high-altitude flight counted 2,800 instances over 40 years in which supplemental oxygen was needed, about 70 a year—though it covers four decades rather than seven and dates from 2011. He also mentioned that he flies for a living.
‘Glad Everyone Is Safe’
Much of the comment thread was preoccupied with the crew. “Your pilot was a stone cold professional during this, the ATC is incredible to hear,” wrote lezipsaloquitur, referring to air traffic control records. Yosoymarinero707 agreed: “The pilot up there was so calm you wouldn’t have even known there was a problem.”
Others speculated about what might have caused the emergency. “It was probably an issue with the pressure controller or outflow valve or something, so they did an emergency descent to not burn the passenger oxygen supply,” wrote reflexx2673.
There was also significant anxiety from people booked on flights in the near future. “Please don’t, I’m flying Delta on Thursday,” wrote thionanunley179. Minabini730 wrote, “This is why my flight anxiety continues to exist.”
Dm4honda was mad at the algorithm, grousing, “Why is it that every time I have a flight, these videos pop up two days before I take off?”
BoardingArea reached out to Maynard via TikTok direct message and to Delta Air Lines via email for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if either responds.
@jord.maynard5 When your @delta flight from Los Angeles makes an emergency stop in Las Vegas due to system failures you could say the saxophones got a little loud as we went from 30,000 feet to 8,000 feet really quick #DeltaAirlines #EmergencyLanding #AviationTikTok #FlightEmergency #traveltok ♬ Saxophones getting louder – Sped Up – AntonioVivald
