Captain Behnam, the one who saved the lives of 381 passengers


I asked the co-pilot to help, we pushed the tip of the plane down and the plane returned. The inside of the plane shakes so much that those gauges on the front of the plane, those things that we look at so that we can fly… They were shaking so much that they were blurred. It was difficult to communicate, talk at the same time and control the plane. The route we were taking was not right on Honolulu. I turned right, with a 10 degree change, we were going straight to Honolulu. Because there are airlines there. I mean it’s like a freeway up there. I went straight to Honolulu, which cut four or five minutes off the distance we had to Honolulu, and they say that the same decision had a lot of influence on this plane being able to land in Hawaii. The three of us put our brains together. It wasn’t like saying I’m the one, I’m the captain, I make all the decisions. We constantly talked about what is the best thing to do. They went through various checklists. All three of us went through different checklists. I was flying, I told the gentleman in the back, Ed, to talk to the control tower and also explain to the flight attendants, because I was really busy. All the plane’s computers was destroyed. We didn’t have one emergency, but nine different emergencies. The wing of the plane was shaking so much that it affected the speed of the plane. On the other hand, there were checklists that said that when you shut down an engine, half of the plane’s system goes out, and we had to move the plane forward with half of the system in place until we were able to land hard and save the lives of all the passengers.