A pilot on the Alaska Airlines blowout flight said she didn't know there was a hole in the 737 Max until it landed — and feared passengers had died

• Emily Wiprud, the first officer on January's Alaska Airlines blowout flight, spoke to CBS News.
• Wiprud said she didn't know there was a hole in the plane until it landed.
• She said she thought people had died after being told there were "empty seats and injuries" on the plane.

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One of the pilots on the Alaska Airlines blowout flight told CBS News she believed passengers had died.

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

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

"The first indication was an explosion in my ears and then a whoosh of air," Wiprud told CBS.

"I didn't know that there was a hole in the airplane until we landed," she added. "I knew something was catastrophically wrong."

She recalled it being "incredibly loud" and wondering why she couldn't hear anything when trying to speak to air traffic control.

Wiprud said her headset was pulled completely off her head by the air rushing out of the cabin. CBS reported that it was sucked out of the hole, along with two passenger's phones.

"I opened the flight deck door and I saw calm, quiet, hundreds of eyes staring right back at me," she told CBS.

When Wiprud asked the flight attendants if they were OK, they responded that there were "empty seats and injuries" — prompting the first officer to believe passengers had been killed.

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

"My captain is a hero. Same with the flight attendants, same with all the personnel that was there to support us that day," Wiprud said. "And that should be celebrated. Everybody survived."

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

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