America’s beleaguered aviation safety record has taken another reputational hit after a video that went viral showing passengers holding a disintegrating Delta Air Lines plane together mid-air, and once again it is Boeing’s manufacturing quality under the microscope.
The Delta flight operated aboard a Boeing 717 on 14 April 2025 was supposed to take flyers from Atlanta to Chicago but was forced to turn around and go back to Atlanta after the incident, causing a two-hour delay.
Footage shared on social media sites such as TikTok has gained hundreds of thousands of views for revealing perturbed passengers as a group of men hold up part of the plane’s collapsed ceiling while the jet flew at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
A Delta representative later stated that the offending panel was afterwards fixed into place “so customers did not have to manually hold it during flight,” and added there were “no injuries” and the “flight continued with about a two-hour delay on another aircraft.”
@lucasmpayne My Hommie @user6420519983283 Tom Witchsy was on a Delta flight and the ceiling collapsed. The attendants finally duct taped it after he held it up for awhile…@delta offered 10,000 miles ( basically 100 dollars) after they had to go back to Atlanta, wait for hours and deplane and get on another plane to Chicago. These planes!!! #airplane #delta #boeing #ntsb ♬ Paper Planes – M.I.A.
Fixing the panel entailed the highly technical solution of holding it together with duct tape, the original online poster revealed in a caption. Delta is reported to have offered 10,000 miles (basically 100 dollars) to affected travellers to cover the inconvenience of the return to Atlanta, the wait, the deplaning and the late touchdown in Chicago.
While some online commentators seem to accept that the incident did not put the plane in jeopardy and was purely cosmetic, other reactions suggest flyers have had quite enough parts falling off and from their aircraft. One notable incident in 2024 saw a plug door blow out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 mid-flight and resulted in extraordinary footage of passengers exposed to sudden depressurisation by a gaping hole in the fuselage.
Back to the Delta roof and “Imagine if this happened during turbulence,” one commenter said. The original poster invited those who seemed to find no issue with the events to put themselves in his shoes: “So if a plane piece falls that you have to hold up mid flight so it doesn’t hit an elderly woman, your (sic) such an engineer that it would not bother you?”
He also pointed out how distressing and frightening such events are: “All that is great but emotionally seeing a plane fall apart at 30,000 feet is not cool.”
Via a spokesperson Delta later thanked its customers “for their patience and cooperation” and went on to “apologise for the delay in their travels.”
