A Sichuan Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Chengdu in China on Monday after the co-pilot was “sucked halfway” out of the plane when a cockpit windshield blew out, Reuters reported quoting local media. The plane was flying from the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing in China to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

Captain Liu Chuanjian, who was hailed as a hero after he landed the Airbus A319 manually, told the Chengdu Economic Daily that his aircraft had just reached a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet when the right windshield broke. Pressure and temperature suddenly dropped in the cockpit.

“There was no warning sign,” Liu said. “Suddenly, the windshield just cracked and made a loud bang. The next thing I know, my co-pilot had been sucked halfway out of the window.”

Liu said that everything in the cockpit was floating in the air, and most of the equipment malfunctioned. “The plane was shaking so hard I could not read the gauges,” he added.

In a statement posted on social media, the airline said that 29 of the plane’s 119 passengers were sent to a hospital for examination. One cabin crew member was being treated for a waist injury and the first officer suffered scratches, but the other passengers were discharged, Sichuan Airlines added.

Airport authorities in China are risk averse, The New York Times reported. To minimise the chances of an accident, aircraft at major airports in the country are spaced farther apart than they would be in Europe or the United States. This increases flight delays.