I don't recall anything in a Ryanair safety briefing about whether you might have difficulty in breathing normally once you have "pull the mask down sharply" put the thing on and attempted to "breathe normally".
Moronic not to have known? Well I don't suppose I'll ever know until I try it, either.
As someone blessed with a knack of discovering how things work when it ain't immediately obvious, I too have often wondered how sharply you have to pull and exactly what type of device is being broken/snapped open/triggered when you do (without buggering it up I mean).
As for the Yahoo report, terrified passengers? Yes I imagine I would be quite fearful myself. Plummet
(=To drop swiftly, in a direct manner)? Yes we seem to agree that's the drill, do we not?
Having not been in this situation, can I also just ask whether the plummet usually begins before during or after the oxygen masks are dropped in a controlled manner & donned variously ?
S&T,
with possibly moronic tendencies, but still don't know for sure.