Posted on 03/09/2003 5:11:55 AM PST by FryingPan101
A private plane chartered by a few Hollywood actors made an unexpected landing in El Paso last week.
According to the Knight Ridder News Service, after a Mardi Gras weekend in New Orleans, "That '70s Show" co-stars Ashton Kutcher, Wilmer Valderrama and Danny Masterson, along with Colin Hanks -- son of Tom Hanks -- and "7th Heaven" stars Geoff and George Stults, were flying back to Los Angeles when the cabin pressure in the plane dropped.
Liz Bellegarde, spokeswoman for El Paso International Airport, said Saturday that there were no reports of a charter plane making an emergency landing at the airport last week. Officials at the West Texas Airport said they also weren't aware of any recent emergency landings at their runways.
Officials at the Santa Teresa Airport could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.
According to the Knight Ridder report, the actors were all sleeping when, unexpectedly, a potato-chip bag exploded and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling as the cabin rapidly lost pressure.
Kutcher tried to wake up the rest of the group. Masterson, however, had passed out, and Kutcher began administering CPR on his co-star. Hanks also began losing consciousness.
The group reportedly had been at a Mardi Gras party March 1 in South Padre Island.
No one was injured, and the group eventually resumed the trip back to L.A.
Although "That 70s Show" is only so-so as far as TV goes, I'm glad that everyone is okay.
The exploding potato chip bag makes me think there should be some kind of early warning alarm, like that, to prevent the Paine Stewart type tragedy. A rapid decompression gets everyone's attention. It's the slow leak that can be insidious.
We think it's cute entertainment. I just don't want to see any of these actors open their mouths about the Iraq situation . . . it'll ruin another show for me!
The potato chip bag exploding leads me to believe that it was a rapid decompression (Boyle's law in action) and/or something went wrong simultaneously with the outflow and safety valve (remote but plausible). Either way it's up to the pilot's descretion to declare an emergency and I still know some old time pilots who - unless their heads are on fire - refuse to declare under any conditions. Since I don't think this falls under the accident category (under NTSB 830) and is probably not an immediate reportable incident it's up to NTSB to ask for a report.
My guess is that someone went beyond Time of Useful Consciousness (TUC) and someone administered CPR in the mistaken belief that it was a heart attack. (It would be interesting to find out if the person who performed CPR reported that the victim was turning blue).
In any case, I'm glad we're only speculating about what happened rather than reading about a bad prang that killed all souls on board. (It also looks like I should go down to Melbourne again and experience hypoxia in the chamber). :-)
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