Few ideas make air passengers gulp harder than the thought of the plane dropping precipitously in the sky—and that happened on an AirAsia flight from Perth, Australia bound for Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia on Sunday. According to CNN, Flight 535 plummeted from 34,000 feet down to 10,000 feet in a span of nine minutes. While the plane safely returned to Perth after pilots controlled the situation, passengers have accused the crew of inciting chaos by panicking—but those familiar with flight crews say it's an unfair criticism.

Passenger videos posted to social media show oxygen masks dropping into the cabin, and a flight attendant yelling, "Passengers get down! Passengers get down!" in preparation for an emergency landing. Further video shows crew yelling, "Fasten seat belts! Fasten seat belts!" Passengers accused the flight crew of stoking hysteria.

"The panic was escalated because of the behavior of staff who were screaming and looked tearful and shocked," passenger Clare Askew told 7 News, an Australian news program. "We look to them for reassurance, and we didn't get any."

Reports on Flight 535 have focused on the cabin crew's behavior, but most lack context on what happened. George Hobica, president of Airfarewatchdog who worked for Eastern Airlines in the 1980s, told Condé Nast Traveler there's a good chance the crew on the AirAsia flight didn't have much experience dealing with depressurization events like the one on Flight 535.

"Cabin crew are young in Asia, and they keep them that way," Hobica said. Many airlines rely on sex appeal of young women to sell airplane seats. That isn't exactly news. As far back as 1936, the New York Times described the ideal "air hostess" as "petite; weight 100 to 118 pounds; height 5 feet to 5 feet 4 inches; age 20 to 26 years." In 2013, CNN detailed how standards in Asia focused greatly on appearance, and not just service. One airline, Nok Air, had no flight attendants over the age of 30, with the average in-flight career lasting just three years.

"A British Airways or a Qantas in Western society would never get away with promoting the sort of image that, for instance, Singapore has always done with its 'Singapore Girls,'" Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent for Hong Kong-based Orient Aviation magazine, told CNN.

Veteran flight attendant Heather Poole said the criticisms levied at the crew of Flight 535 weren't just about inexperience, but rather, about doubling down on sexism.

"We're supposed to yell in emergency situations because that's our job, that's what we're trained to do, why we're there in the first place," Poole told Condé Nast Traveler via email. "Some passengers said the crew sounded 'hysterical.' There's that word that gets thrown around so easily when women are involved, when we're shouting instead of what, smiling and looking pretty? We're still a female dominated industry. If the crew had been all male, do you think they'd get called hysterical?"

AirAsia released a statement apologizing for the incident, saying, "The safety of our guests is our utmost priority," and that "AirAsia Indonesia apologizes for any inconvenience caused." The airline attributed the unusual loss of altitude to a "technical issue," though it wasn't the first such experience for AirAsia customers this year. As USA Today notes, in June, a flight from Perth to Kuala Lumpur experienced an explosion and engine failure, during which a flight attendant "urged passengers to pray."

For his part, Hobica said it's hard to criticize the crew of Flight 535 too harshly.

"We're only human," he said.