Flying on an airplane is already a pretty stressful experience for many of us.

But imagine how much more stressful it would be if the plane you were flying in was a convertible and the pilots decided to drop the top back mid flight on entire list of pretty bad things would probably end up happening to you, and I assume that you would most likely not have a good time.

Fortunately for you, this will probably never happen again.

But unfortunately for some of the unluckiest 95 people to have ever existed, something like this actually did happen.

Once upon a time.

Back in the distant past of 1988 Aloha Airlines used to be a company that operated out of Honolulu and service the major Hawaiian airports with connections to the U.

S and Canadian West coasts.

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 happened to be a regularly scheduled short flight between Hilo on the Big island of Hawaii and Honolulu on the 28th of April.

In 1988 the plane that was servicing the route was a Boeing 7 37 to 97 Nothing unusual was noted during the pre departure inspection, and the plane had already completed three round trip flights just that day.

So everything was lining up to be just another routine flight over to Honolulu.

Captain on board was a 44 year old veteran with 8500 flight hours, while the first officer was also a highly experienced 36 year old with 8000 flight hours.

In total, there were six crew members and 89 passengers on board, and all of them were unknowingly in for one of the wildest experiences that a human has probably ever had.

The plane performed a routine takeoff from Hilo and casually reached its cruising altitude of 24,000 ft.

But approximately 23 minutes after take off while the plane was located about 23 nautical miles away from the island of Maui, bad things began toe happen.

Drinks were just being served in the first class area when everybody heard a sudden bang, and just like that, the entire roof of the Plains stretching from the back of the cockpit to the plane's wing, just disintegrated and went flying off into the atmosphere.

54 year old flight attendant Claribel Lansing was just handing a drink to a customer when the rushing wind immediately pulled her up out of the plane without any protection.

Her body was never discovered afterwards.

Fortunately, though, everyone else on board were wearing their seat belts at the time, which prevented any similar incidents from happening.

Unfortunately, however, was that falling out of the plane was not the only danger.

The remaining 94 people on board were exposed to a whirlwind of flying metal and debris left over from what had just been the roof.

Passengers on board could look around 180 degrees around them and see nothing but open sky.

A woman who is in seat to see next to what had just been a window had her face sliced repeatedly by flying metal and flailing wires.

After hearing the bang and noticing the sudden change in cabin pressure, the captain turned around to realize that not only had the cockpit door been completely ripped away, but all he could see behind him was just a clear, open blue sky where, you know there used to be a roof.

Fortunately, though, the two pilots were still capable of controlling the aircraft, and they began an immediate descent in change, of course, to the nearest available airport over on Maui.

The plane began to violently ya and roll, while a lot of the metal from the roof had simultaneously flown into both of the engines, causing engine number one to fail.

The crew couldn't get it to restart, and they had to rely on single engine power before encountering the next problem.

The nearest airport on Maui was only a few minutes flying away, But when the crew attempted to lower the landing gear, they didn't receive a positive green light indicating that it had been.

But they also didn't receive a negative red light, which would have indicated that it failed, so they just kind of had hoped for.

The best of the landing gear actually had been successfully lowered.

Meanwhile, the passengers on board were obviously pretty terrified.

At first, everybody just assumed that the plane was going down and that they were all going to die.

But after a while.

When that didn't happen in the plane continued to keep flying without its roof.

Many of the passengers reported that they began to feel a sudden sense of optimism and hope.

Still, it took the plane 13 MAWR, agonizing minutes of flying without a roof full of terrified people before it finally arrived at the airport on Maui and performed a successful landing.

With the landing gear deployed, everybody remaining was successfully evacuated, with 65 people being reported with injuries and eight of them with serious injuries, including one who was in critical condition at the time.

Complicating things, however, Maui Island had no infrastructure in place at the time to handle an emergency of this magnitude.

There were only two ambulances located on the entire island, so air traffic controllers had to call a local tour company to scrape together several of their tour vans to come and transport everybody else that couldn't fit in the ambulances to the nearest hospital.

The aircraft itself was damaged well beyond repair, and it was written off and dismantled where it landed, and questions immediately arose as to how exactly a plane's roof could just fly off mid air So an investigation by the U.

S.

National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the following is likely what happened?

The Boeing 7 37 200 Siri's and Question was designed to have a service lifespan of 20 years, and the plane involved in this disaster was 19 years old.

But that wasn't really the problem, though The bigger issue was that the 7 37 200 Siris was also designed for a lifespan of 75,000 flights.

This is because over time the number of pressurization and depressurization cycles that a plane goes through will begin to weaken its fuselage over time.

Because this plane was being used exclusively for short trips between the various Hawaiian islands, it had racked up 89,680 flights over its lifetime, which, if you know your math is a lot more than it should have had.

Metal fatigue and cracking likely occurred around the rivets of the fuselage over this time, which wasn't helped by the fact that all of these flights were taking place in the humid and salty coastal environment of Hawaii, which likely led to corrosion issues as well.

None of these problems were ever detected by Aloha Airlines.

So the NTSB placed the blame for the roof failure fully on the negligence of the Aloha maintenance and management team.

After all, if you're running an airline company, you should probably run the math on your planes lifespans every so often to avoid being known as that company that has the convertible airplane problem.

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