"It felt like I was being stabbed in my ear," passenger Jaci Purser tells Inside Edition.
A Delta jet had to turn around shortly after takeoff after a pressurization issue. Several passengers screamed in pain and were bleeding from their ears or nose.
The scare on the Delta Airlines Boeing 737 flight happened minutes after take off from Salt Lake City. As the flight ascended to 10,000 feet, passengers grabbed their ears in pain.
Passenger Jaci Purser says the pressure caused her eardrum to burst.
"At first my ear was just popping over and over and over," Purser tells Inside Edition. "And then I got a stabbing sensation. It felt like I was being stabbed in my ear."
Her coworker Josh Day was also bleeding from his ear.
"It just kept building that pressure, almost like someone squeezing a stress ball and never letting go," Day says. "It hurt so bad I started crying."
Caryn Allen was on the flight bound for Portland as well.
"To realize that many people had blood coming out of their ears and some out of noses was pretty unsettling," Allen says.
The airline says the aircraft was unable to pressurize above 10,000 feet.
Passengers say they knew something was wrong.
"It just started going up and down and that's when we know something is not right with this plane," Purser says.
"They did announce that they were returning to the Salt Lake Airport but they still didn't tell us what was wrong. It would have been nice to know exactly what was wrong because people were in pain," Allen says.
The flight made an emergency landing in Salt Lake City, where paramedics treated 10 passengers.
Aviation expert Steven Cowell spoke with Inside Edition.
"That sudden loss of pressurization just absolutely wreaked havoc on their sinuses and caused a great deal of pain," Cowell says.
In a statement, Delta says, "We sincerely apologize to our customers for their experience on flight 1203 on Sept. 15. The flight crew followed procedures to return to SLC where our teams on the ground supported our customers with their immediate needs."
Inside Edition reached out to Boeing for comment but did not hear back.
