Terrifying moment pilot of shaking plane tells passengers to 'pray'

The pilot of a violently shaking plane instilled fear in his passengers when he asked them to ‘pray’ for their survival.

Back in 2017, an AirAsia X flight was travelling from Perth in Western Australia to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia with 359 passengers onboard.

For the first 90 minutes of the journey, all was plain sailing.

However, according to various outlets, passengers suddenly reported hearing a ‘huge bang’ on the Airbus 330.

Following the mysterious noise, the aircraft began to shake violently over the Indian Ocean.

Reports claim that passengers felt as if they were in a ‘washing machine’ and after two hours of shaking, the flight was forced to turn around and head back to Perth.

Following the ordeal, multiple passengers onboard posted footage to social media and complained that they thought they ‘might die’ onboard the rattling aircraft.

In one clip, shared by Instagram user @maesaya, the pilot of the AirAsia X flight could be heard saying: "Please pay attention and please listen to everything."

“Our survival depends on your cooperation,” he continued before saying passengers to pray twice for their safety.

“I hope you all say a prayer; I will be saying a prayer too and let’s hope we all get back home safely.”

Passengers were experiencing a 'washing machine' sensation. (Instagram/@maesaya)

After the flight touched back down in Australia, CNN talked to a holidaymaker called Tim who claimed lots of people onboard the plane had been ‘crying’ during the ‘technical issue’.

He said: “Lots of people crying, lots of people pulling out the life jackets - pretty much preparing. We thought there was a good chance we were going to go down.”

According to the outlet, the pilot claimed the flight back to Perth Airport would be ‘slower’ because flight D7237 had suffered a single-engine failure.

After landing back in Australia at 10 am, the crew onboard the AirAsia X flight were given a round of applause, with one man saying: “The captain did a very good job, he was reassuring and then we landed safely.”

Following the incident, an airport spokesperson confirmed that Fire and Emergency Services had been called to meet the plane, as a precautionary measure, but there was no indication anyone had been hurt.

Furthermore, AirAsia released a statement that said all passengers were being attended to by ground staff and all necessary assistance was being provided.

“The safety of our guests are our utmost priority,” it added before claiming that flyers would be getting rerouted.

A passenger said people had been 'crying' on the flight. (YouTube/CNN)

After watching harrowing footage of the incident, posted to YouTube in 2017, viewers took to the comments section of the video to have their say.

One wrote: “If the pilot asks passengers to pray you know it's a bad issue.”

A second said: “'Our survival depends on your cooperation' coming from a pilot is about as reassuring as firefighter in a burning house handing me a bucket of water. You were trained for this, I'm just sitting in this death trap and try not to s**t myself.”

“When the captain asks you to pray... boy, you better pray,” typed another.