Man next to passenger who opened plane door mid-flight 'thought he was going to die'

A passenger who was sitting next to a man who opened a plane’s door mid-flight has admitted that he ‘thought he was going to die’.

Lee Yoon-jun was on a Asiana Airlines flight from Jeju to Daegu in South Korea last month when someone onboard decided to open the emergency door while they were in flight. You can see footage here:

Lee says he was sat watching YouTube on his phone when he felt a hit from an intense wind, strong enough to blow away his hat and headphones - and making it difficult to breathe.

Speaking to CNN, he said: “I just felt the horror of death. I thought, 'I’m going to die. This is it, this is the end for me.'

“In disaster movies, everyone always seems to die when a door opens in the air. I wondered what I had done wrong in my life. It was just a fleeting moment, but I had so many thoughts.”

The plane had been coming into land at the time, but it was still a whopping 700-feet (213 metres) in the air.

Lee said he glanced at the man sitting next to him and noticed he was ‘trembling with fear’.

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“When I looked down, I noticed his feet swaying in the wind,” Lee told CNN.

However, at this point he had no idea that the man sat beside him would later be identified as the person responsible for opening the door.

Somehow, Lee missed the man opening the door and believed it had been a technical fault with the plane.

But when the plane finally hit the ground, he noticed that the man next to him seemed to want to jump out of the still-moving plane.

He explained: “While I was looking at the flight attendant, I heard the sound of someone next to me unlocking his seatbelt, I realized this person was leaning towards the emergency exit.”

Lee was able to restrain the man, with the help of some other passengers until they were able to safely get off the plane.

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Lee says he later discovered the man, who is in his 30s, had been arrested.

Police said the unnamed passenger was in a bad mental state and that he had told them he felt he was suffocating and wanted to get off the plane as soon as possible.

Somewhat miraculously, no one was seriously injured in the incident and Lee says its given him a new outlook on life.

“It feels like I’ve been born again, I’m just trying to have more fun and live more interestingly. I’m enjoying it,” he said.

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