Delta Flight Drops Rapidly, Makes Emergency Landing

ATLANTA — A Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, dropped rapidly from 39,000 feet to 10,000 feet in less than seven minutes on Wednesday, prompting oxygen masks to deploy followed by an emergency landing in Tampa. The aircraft carrying Flight 2353 remained at Tampa International Airport overnight as passengers scrambled to make other flights and connections.

"Chaos sort of ensued amongst the passengers," passenger Harris Dewoskin, who snapped pictures on board the plane during the incident, told WSB-TV.

"One of the flight attendants, I believe, grabbed the intercom and was just repeatedly over the intercom stating, ‘Do not panic. Do not panic,’ but obviously it’s a hectic moment so the passengers around me a lot of people were kind of hyperventilating, breathing really hard,” Dewoskin said.

"There was a scary 60 to 90 seconds where we really didn’t know what was going on. At 15,000 feet in the air, it's a scary moment for sure,” Dewoskin said.

Delta Air Lines said the plane diverted to Tampa "out of an abundance of caution."