Passenger Roid Williams recounts the episode to the Washington Post:
Boarding and taxiing went smoothly, he said. The pilots squared the Boeing 777 with the runway, hit the throttle, accelerated down the airstrip and took off. For about a minute, they climbed normally.
Then, the nose pitched up and the plane started ascending at “an alarming angle,” Williams wrote in a Facebook post recounting the incident.
“That’s when you started to hear folks let out a few screams,” he told The Post.
Williams, who studied aviation, said he feared the plane might stall. After climbing steeply for three to five seconds, the plane went into a sudden nosedive.
. . .
After diving for nearly 20 seconds, the plane pulled up “at a very strong rate.” Williams clenched his teeth, squeezed his armrests, pushed himself into the back of his seat and kept muttering prayers.