Behind the story with Chris Yates

After the belly of their jumbo jet was ripped off in mid-air, passengers could do little except strap on their oxygen masks and record their 20,000ft (6,000m) plunge. Footage from mobile phones showed the Qantas flight from London to Melbourne experiencing an “explosive decompression” when a 10ft hole appeared in its fuselage.

Investigators were focusing last night on the possibility of an explosion in the baggage hold or corrosion on the 17-year-old aircraft. Airlines around the world are being informed about the incident on the Boeing 747-400, one of the bestselling passenger jets. Almost 700 are still in service.

A hole “the size of a mini-van” appeared in the front, right-hand side of Flight Q30 an hour after it left Hong Kong with 346 passengers and 19 crew. A section of the cabin flooring gave way, part of the ceiling collapsed and debris flew into the first-class area. Captain John Francis Bartels, a former pilot with the Royal Australian Navy, and his co-pilot Werninghaus Bernd put the aircraft into an emergency descent from 29,000ft to 10,000ft and landed an hour later in Manila, to applause from passengers.

One passenger, Brendan McClements, 45, chief executive of the Victorian Major Events Company, said: “The fuselage started to shake, the air rushed out. Everyone sat there with their oxygen masks on and realised they had very little control over what happened next. Most people realised the best thing they could possibly do was sit in their seats. The guy in front of me ended up reading a book.”

Debra Manchester, a housewife from Buckinghamshire, said: “Newspapers and what looked like part of the ceiling flew past me. After a while, things calmed down and there was a deadly silence. There was still debris all around our feet but we all started to feel a bit safer when we could take our masks off.”

She added that 20 minutes after the aircraft took off from Heathrow, she heard a loud bang near one of the doors. “You have to wonder if that explosion could have caused the second one,” she said. Phil Restall, from London, said that he was woken with a jolt by the loud bang before the aircraft descended rapidly. “No one panicked, there was no screaming. It wasn’t your typical television movie. Everyone listened to the cabin staff,” he said. “After we disembarked it started to dawn on people that this was a major incident. There were 350 people up there who were very lucky. Seeing the hole caused a lot of emotion. People were physically shaking. Many realised how close they were to their own mortality.”

Ding Lima, a Manila airport operations officer, said: “Upon disembarkation, there were some passengers who vomited. You can see in their faces that they were really scared.”

The Boeing 747-400 has been in production since 1988 and is the bestselling model of the 747 series. Todd Curtis, chief executive of AirSafe.com and a former Boeing safety engineer, said that the only similar incident – involving a 747-122 – occurred on a United Airlines flight. Nine died when a cargo door blew out in 1989 after it left Hawaii for Australia.

Investigators are thought to be focusing initially on an explosion involving fire extinguishers or oxygen bottles. Other experts suspect that the fuselage panel was ripped off after rivets snapped because of to metal fatigue or corrosion. Investigators will also review the extensive reconfiguration of the aircraft’s cabin, which meant that it was out of service for several weeks this year.

David Learmount, safety editor at Flight International magazine, said: “It’s possible there was some kind of explosive device in the suitcases. There’s a hole where there shouldn’t be.” He added that there were other possible causes for the damage, which he said was almost certainly caused by “air escaping from a crack caused by some kind of failure”.

The safe landing maintains Qantas’s reputation for safety. In the film Rain Man, the autistic character played by Dustin Hoffman did not want to fly because of a fear of crashing. When told that all airlines had suffered crashes, Hoffman’s character responded that Qantas had not.

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