Roughly a minute after a December United Airlines flight took off from OGG in Kahului, it took a steep dive, descending rapidly from 2,200 feet to 775 feet, according to flight data.
Per a United statement, “UA1722 took off at 00:49.28.882 UTC on 19 December (14:49 local time 18 Dec). It climbed to a maximum altitude of 2,200 feet at 00:50:39.007 before descending to 775 feet at 00:50:57.500. The aircraft recovered from its dive and resumed its climb and safely arrived in San Francisco at 05:03 UTC.”
“We took off a normal rate of climb and then all of a sudden the nose pitched up pretty, pretty dramatically for maybe 3 to 5 seconds,” passenger Rod Williams told CBS News. “And at that point, there were a number of screams that were let out because it was, you know, an unusual climb at that point. But it was very brief and it was followed by a very dramatic descent. ”
There was inclement weather at the time, but the exact cause of the plunge has not been determined.
