This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jack Cabot, a 22-year-old student at Ithaca College. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
On March 22, I was coming back to New York from a short spring break trip to Calgary. My connecting flight back was through Montreal.
There were a few moments of pretty bad turbulence in the air, but nothing crazy happened until the landing. That’s when everything went pretty haywire. The plane landed quite hard, and then two or three seconds later, I heard a really loud bang.
Everybody was terrified as the plane lost control
Everyone already seemed pretty annoyed when we boarded the flight to New York because it had already been delayed a few times. We left about two hours after our original departure time.
As we were landing, the plane started veering right really quickly. It felt like it had completely lost control. I put my head down, ducked between my arms, and prayed. There was a lot of screaming; everybody was terrified, and I was completely panicked.
When we finally came to a stop, I thought, “Okay, we’re somehow alive.” As I looked around, so many people were bleeding. One guy’s whole face was gashed up. It was clear that a lot of people were very hurt.
I was sitting in the middle area of the plane, a row in front of the emergency exit. When I looked toward the front of the plane, it seemed to have completely crumpled inward, like a wall of broken parts.
A woman behind me suggested we go out the emergency exit. I didn’t think the plane was a good place to be, so we all got in a line and headed out one by one. It wasn’t too big a plane, so we jumped onto the wing and then took another 4- or 5-foot drop onto the ground.
I feel grateful and lucky
It took two or three minutes for medical attention to arrive. I was only a little bruised up, but others were more seriously hurt. I feel really grateful and lucky.
After we got off the plane, we sat on a bus for three to four hours, then waited in a lounge. They were performing headcounts of the people there. I chose to talk with the police about what I saw, and I got out of the airport at around 4:30 a.m., even though we landed at around 11:30 p.m. My brother, whom I texted after we landed, picked me up from the airport. I got home around an hour later and went straight to bed.
I’m still planning to fly
I’ll be a little reluctant next time I have to get on a plane, but I’ll have to get over it. It would be really shocking if something like this happened twice.
To recover from what happened, I think I’ll need a few days of relaxation and some exposure therapy. I actually think flying more will help me get past this.
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