"They had just taken drink orders when I heard a huge sound and oxygen masks came down and we started making a rapid descent. The pilot made a rapid descent from about 34,400 feet (10.3 km) to 11,000 feet (3.4 km), following standard practice to reach an altitude where supplemental oxygen is no longer required, the FAA said. "I don't know this dude, but I was like, 'I'm going to just hold your hand,'" Redden, a 28-year-old doctoral student at Arizona State University, recalled Saturday, a day after her Phoenix-to-Sacramento flight was forced into an emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, Ariz., with a hole a few feet long in the roof of the passenger cabin.  (Updates with possible impact on Sunday, other details) 
 
 By Alex Dobuzinskis 
 
 LOS ANGELES, April 2 (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend as it inspected 79 aircraft from its Boeing 737 fleet after one of its planes with a gaping hole in the fuselage made an emergency landing, the airline said on Saturday. A total of 931 Boeing 737-300s are operated by all airlines worldwide, with 288 of them in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Southwest and Boeing engineers will inspect the grounded aircraft, and the airline is working with federal authorities to determine the cause of the incident, Southwest said. A flight attendant was sucked out of the plane and plunged to her death, and dozens of passengers were injured.
– Fatigue cracking has been found along the entire 5-foot section of a Southwest Airlines jet that ripped open on Friday, forcing an emergency landing in Arizona. The NTSB says that mechanics will cut a 9-foot by 3-foot section of the plane and send it to Washington, DC, for testing. Southwest has responded by grounding at least 79 planes, reports the AP; at least 300 flights were canceled yesterday. And more cancellations were on the horizon today: "We don't at this time know what the impact will be, but it's possible that it could be in the 300-flight range again," a Southwest spokesman told Reuters.