to determine where it was reporter: tonight a terrified emotional passenger tells cnn the landing was so violent i thought they were crashing. i feel just so just lucky to be alive. i ve had a lot of people contact me and loved ones calling and all i could think about is i was going down on that plane was how my life was being taken away from me. reporter: this incident could have been so much worse and aviation experts are telling us that one thing that could have happened is a catastrophic failure of the plane s left wing and they say the 737 have fuel tanks throughout the wings inside. and if shrapnel had ignited a fuel wing and they could have lost control of the flaps and possibly that plane could have crashed. wolf. wow! there was, i m told, a safety directive regarding the type of engine this plane had. is that right. reporter: that is right.
passenger tells cnn the landing was so violent he thought they were crashing. it s just so much, we re really lucky to be alive. i ve had a lot of people contact me and loved ones calling and, you know, all i can think about going down in that plane was you know how my life was being taken away from me. this incident, could have been, could have been so much worse tonight. aviation experts tells one thing that could have happened is the plane s left wing could have been compromised at least somewhat. they say these 737s have fuel tanks throughout the winds. if shrapnel ignited one or more fuel tanks, damaged that wind, possibly compromised the hydraulic controls, they say the pilot could have lost control of the flaps and this plane could have crashed. wolf. you have new information, just how precipitously this plane dropped, right? the tracking radar flight 24 estimates the plane descended 21,000 feet in only about five