An American Airlines flight , operated by SkyWest Airlines, made an emergency landing on Monday night in Nebraska, after the pilots could not reach the flight attendants and heard someone outside the cockpit door, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Flight 6469 took off from Omaha's Eppley Airfield at 6.41pm local time (10.41 am Tuesday AEDT) headed to Los Angeles but almost immediately turned around, landing just 18 minutes later, according to the tracking site FlightAware.

Henry Gruver was seated in the front row of the main cabin, travelling to Japan with his wife and seven-year-old daughter.

"All of a sudden, we started banking around the city of Omaha. And, you know, you're tilting the wings and everything," Gruver told CNN.

"My wife noticed that the stew

See Full Page