Plane makes emergency landing after pilots lose contact with crew, hear banging on cockpit door

WASHINGTON — An American Airlines flight, operated by SkyWest Airlines, made an emergency landing Monday night in Nebraska, after the pilots could not reach the flight attendants and heard someone outside the cockpit door, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Flight 6469 took off from Omaha's Eppley Airfield at 6:41 p.m. local time headed to Los Angeles but almost immediately turned around, landing just 18 minutes later, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

Henry Gruver was seated in the front row of the main cabin, traveling to Japan with his wife and 7-year-old daughter.

"All of a sudden, we started banking around the city of Omaha. And, you know, you're tilting the wings and everything," Gruver told CNN. "My wife noticed that the stewardess was kind of banging on the cockpit door, like, OK, what's going on?"

"I'm starting to pray, and I'm thinking, you know, first thing comes to mind: Is the pilots going crazy and kind of take the plane down?" he said.

Passengers were not told anything about what was happening until police boarded the plane after landing.

"Everybody was really calm. I guess nobody knew what was happening, so it was probably a good thing," Gruver said.

The Embraer ERJ 175 regional jet parked away from the terminal with two firetrucks surrounding it, a photo showed.

"After landing, it was determined there was a problem with the interphone system and the flight crew was knocking on the cockpit door," the FAA said in a statement.

SkyWest confirmed a problem with "a flight crew mic," on Tuesday, adding, "We apologize for the inconvenience."

The flight finally took back off for Los Angeles nearly five hours late, according to FlightAware. The Gruver family missed their connection to Japan and waited overnight in the airport for the next flight.

Skywest and American Airlines have not contacted them since the incident, they said.

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