Terrified passengers feared for their lives today when part of their plane fell off in MID-AIR.
The holidaymakers screamed in horror when they heard a loud bang as the jet circled above Gatwick airport.
Passenger Yousef Laazizi said: “We thought we were going to crash.”
The Thomas Cook plane left Gatwick at 9am for Hurghada in Egypt but was soon forced to turn back.
Yousef, 34, said the noise that blasted through the jet as the emergency slide fell to the ground was “enormous”.
The lorry driver, from London, who was travelling with girlfriend Natalie Broad, added: “It was terrifying, like hitting a brick wall in mid-air. People were screaming and crying.”
The 14ft-long slide is understood to have landed on farmland in Langton Green, Kent. The Civil Aviation Authority has launched a probe.
Thomas Cook said the plane, with 237 passengers, landed safely at Gatwick.
The firm added it had begun an investigation, and said the passengers were due to depart this afternoon on a replacement aircraft.
A Kent police spokesman added: "Kent Police was called at 11.15am to reports of an object falling from an airplane above the Langton Green area.
"Officers are currently trying to locate the object which is believed to have landed in an area close to the Kent and Sussex border."
The accident comes just two days after people heard a loud bang over Kent when two RAF Typhoon jets intercepted a Latvian cargo plane and caused a sonic boom.
It's not been a good few weeks for Thomas Cook. Earlier today we reported an attendant at the firm had told a disabled war hero 'it wasn't his problem' that he couldn't use the toilet mid flight.
And two weeks ago a report revealed that a packed holiday jet made an emergency landing after a series of errors by the pilot who was stressed about being demoted.
