• Emily Wiprud, the first officer on the Alaska Airlines crashed flight in January, spoke to CBS News.

• Wiprud said she only learned about the hole in the plane when it landed.

• She said she assumed people had died after being told there were “empty seats and injuries” on the plane.

One of the pilots on the Alaska Airlines flight that crashed told CBS News she believes passengers had died.

Emily Wiprud, the first officer, is the first crew member to speak publicly about the January incident.

The Boeing 737 Max was at an altitude of 16,000 feet when a door plug separated from the fuselage, causing an uncontrolled decompression and an emergency landing. The incident sparked a critical investigation at Boeing, which has since appointed a new CEO.

“The first sign was an explosion in my ears and then a hissing of air,” Wiprud told CBS.

“I didn’t know there was a hole in the plane until we landed,” she added. “I knew something had gone catastrophically wrong.”

She recalled that it was “incredibly loud” and that she wondered why she couldn’t hear anything when she tried to speak to air traffic control.

Wiprud said her headset was completely ripped off her head by air rushing out of the cabin. CBS reported it was sucked out of the hole along with the phones of two passengers.

“I opened the door to the flight deck and saw peace and quiet, hundreds of eyes staring at me,” she told CBS.

When Wiprud asked the flight attendants if everything was OK, they replied that there were “empty seats and injured people,” which led the first officer to believe that passengers had died.

It turned out that one of the empty seats belonged to the teenager whose shirt had been sucked out of the plane, and he had moved to another seat.

“My captain is a hero. The same goes for the flight attendants and all the staff who supported us that day,” said Wiprud. “And that should be celebrated. Everyone survived.”

The investigation into Alaska Flight 1282 is still ongoing. In a preliminary report, investigators said the jet left the Boeing factory without the key bolts used to secure the door stopper.

In an interview three days after the incident, one of the flight attendants told investigators they did not feel safe on a Boeing 737 Max.

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