PARIS (AP) - A Ryanair plane made an emergency landing in central France after it suddenly lost cabin pressure and descended 26,200 feet (8,000 meters) in five minutes, French officials said Tuesday. Up to 26 people were hospitalized.

The Boeing 737 was carrying 174 passengers and crew from Bristol, England, to Gerona, Spain, before the urgent landing in Limoges, officials in the Haute-Vienne region said.

"I think it's fair to say there was muffled consternation in the first few seconds," passenger Pen Hadow told Sky News. "People were clearly suffering with the shock of it, but on the whole ... people had a stiff upper lip about it and they were resigned to their fate. They were properly terrified.

"They thought they were going to meet their maker. And that's not an exaggeration," Hadow added.

The "depressurization incident" caused the oxygen masks on board to deploy, a statement from the Irish carrier Ryanair said.

French officials said 26 people were taken to hospital, and suffered mostly from chest, nose and ear pain. The Ryanair statement said 16 people "complaining of ear ache" were taken to hospital, and that they were later released.

Ryanair said all 168 passengers had disembarked safely upon landing and that company engineers inspected the aircraft and found the oxygen masks had worked properly.

Although French officials said the plane descended 26,200 feet (8,000 meters), Ryanair gave no details about a loss of altitude.

RyanAir said it brought in a second flight to carry 127 remaining passengers - not 147 as first indicated - to Barcelona Gerona airport, where it landed early Tuesday. Some passengers chose not to take that flight, and were taken on by coach.

The carrier said the airplane is 5 years old and was last serviced on July 24, and that the pilot has flown with Ryanair for more than 5-1/2 years. The company said French and Irish aviation authorities were investigating the incident, and that it would not comment further while the probe continued.

Spain's airport authority, AENA, said the second flight arrived in Gerona around 4:20 a.m. (0220 GMT). In the end, 125 passengers were on this plane, an AENA official said.

The discrepancy in various figures could not immediately be explained.

Gerona's airport has recently been closing from midnight to 6 a.m. because of construction work, but in this case the airport opened to receive the Ryanair flight, the AENA official said.