'We're in trouble, we're going down': Pilot's mid-air announcement over PA followed by 30,000-foot nosedive leaves passengers aboard Southwest Airlines flight terrified

PUBLISHED: 17:11 EST, 14 November 2013 | UPDATED: 17:39 EST, 14 November 2013

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Passengers aboard a packed Southwest Airlines flight from Florida to North Carolina were led to believe they were about to die when a pilot allegedly announced that the plane was going down.

The Tuesday night Flight 3426 from Tampa took a nosedive some 41,000 feet in the air, dropping to under 10,000 in ten minutes just 100 miles away from Raleigh Durham International Airport.

Passenger Shelley Wills said before the aircraft took the plunge, the captain made the disturbing announcement over the loudspeaker.

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Terror in the sky: Passengers aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 3426 (not pictured) from Florida to North Carolina say they heard he captain say the plane was in trouble and going down

Nosedive: The Boeing 737 dropped from 41,000 feet to under 10,000 in 10 minutes just 100 miles away from Raleigh Durham International Airport

‘He said, “We're going down,” and everyone is looking around like, is this a joke? Is he serious? And then you felt the nosedive,’ passenger Shelley Wills told the station WTVD.

According to Wills, all around her frightened people pulled out their phones to call and send text messages to their loved ones in what they thought were likely their final moments on earth.

The woman also texted her daughter and husband, but the messages never went through.

Final words: Passengers Shelley Wills said she and other passengers pulled out their cell phones to call and send text messages to their loved ones, telling them they are about to die

‘It says, “I love you Alyssa. My plane is going down,"’ she read. ‘I thought I was going to die and that's what everyone on that plane thought. That we were all going to die, just by one word of the captain.’

Following the drastic drop in altitude, the Boeing 737 leveled off and went on to land at the airport without incident.

According to Wills, as the shaken passengers were disembarking, they heard over the PA: 'Thank you for hanging with us.'

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The airline said the panic was sparked by a sudden loss of cabin pressure, which prompted the captain to inform the crew that the plane will be making an early but controlled descent.

However, the message somehow ended up being broadcast on the PA system for all 96 passengers to hear, Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger has disputed passengers’ claims that the pilot led them to believe the plane was about to crash.

'Our pilot said he was going to 10,000 feet,' she told CNN, adding that reports claiming that he simply said, 'We're going down,' were inaccurate.

However, passenger Grace Stroud said she knows what she heard.

Misunderstanding: The airline said a sudden loss of cabin pressure prompted the captain to inform the crew that the plane will be making an early descent, but the message ended up being broadcast to the passengers

‘At first it sounded like someone was coming over the PA to talk. Then it sounded like shots through the cabin, twice, back to back,’ Miss Stroud told CNN. ‘Seconds later, the panicked captain said, “We're in trouble; we're going down.”'

The woman recounted how flight attendants began securing the overhead bins, and one of them told the captain to deploy oxygen masks.

‘I'm sure everybody went through their private moments,’ Stroud said. ‘My moment was, “OK, so this is how I'm going to die,” and “At least it will be quick."’

Despite the airline representatives’ assertions contending that the pilot said nothing to suggest that the plane was in distress, Stroud told CNN that she had received an email from Southwest explaining that the captain accidentally activated the PA system in the cabin, which led to the confusion.

Happy end: The plane (not pictured) later leveled off and landed safely two minutes ahead of schedule

Another Southwest flier Phyllis Westerman told the radio station AM 750 that she and her husband heard a flight attended panicking and yelling into the cockpit, 'Manually deploy them!' in reference to oxygen masks.

According to FlightStats, Flight 3426 landed at RDU two minutes ahead of schedule at 6.08pm.

The Federal Aviation Administration has launched an investigation into the incident.

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Ducksoup, San Jose, 5 minutes ago

Please be careful exiting the aircraft as items in your bowels may have shifted during flight.

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Belltoller, Tampa, 32 minutes ago

Look on the bright-side. They landed early.

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KHFlynn, Land Of the Free and the Brave USA, 46 minutes ago

I was the Purser flight attendant on a transatlantic flight and halfway there, during a storm, with no where to land but to ditch in the ocean, lightning hit our windshield and cracked it a bit against the fuselage. It jarred the plane enough to be noticed outside the realm of regular turbulence. So I opened the cockpit door, leaned in and asked if everything was okay. Our captain screamed, literallyscreamed, at me to "close the door. We're all going to die." It was loud enough for the entire 1st class to hear but was so unexpectedly ludicrous that I looked over at the First Officer who glanced at me and rolled his eyes at the captain. So I closed the door (this was pre-9/11 when we could come and go into the cockpit as needed) and casually spoke to any passenger that heard, making it seem like a crazy joke. Luckily, they believed me and there were no other problems with our flight. However, our esteemed Captain was forced to retire after that flight. Thank God!