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Google engineer shares terrifying video of his plane falling apart, makes dad jokes

The plane landed safely in Hawaii.

Brian Koerber

on February 13, 2018

Passengers on United Airlines flight 1175 from San Francisco to Honolulu experienced an unfortunate incident Tuesday when the engine's cowling fell off mid-flight. The plane made it to its destination safely, though it did make an emergency landing.

Google Engineer Erik Haddad was on the flight, and captured this video from his seat on board the Boeing 777-200. The cowling, or the piece that cover's the plane's engine, is completely missing. A piece of the plane can also be seen shaking in the clip.

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Haddad managed to have a good attitude about the whole thing, tweeting out a solid plane pun and a joke.

"That looks bad, plane and simple," he wrote.

Another tweet shows Haddad looking at the plane's safety manual with the grim scene in the background.

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Others were not so chill about the whole thing.

"Scariest flight of my life," Maria Falaschi wrote.

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A spokesperson for United Airlines issued the following statement:

United flight 1175 traveling to Honolulu from San Francisco landed safely after the pilots called for an emergency landing because of a loss of the engine cowling (the covering of the engine). Our pilots followed all necessary protocols to safely land the aircraft. The aircraft taxied to the gate and passengers deplaned normally.

While the engine incident is indeed scary, Haddad managed to use his unfortunate flight to stick it to Fox News. When a newsworthy incident like this occurs, TV stations often reply to the tweet, asking permission to use the footage in their broadcast.

Haddad approved usage to a number of requests from news outlets, but when a producer for Fox News' Fox and Friends asked to use the clip, he straight up denied her.