Boarding the Singapore Airlines jet that was supposed to fly her home, Deborah Brosnan asked a stewardess if she and her husband could switch seats from the middle of the plane to the back, so they could stretch out and sleep on the 15-hour flight.
At first, the stewardess said the plane was too full, but then changed her mind and moved them farther back.
That tiny event may very well have saved their lives.
Hurtling down a pitch-black runway in a driving rainstorm on Oct. 31 in Taipei, the Boeing 747-400 smashed into construction equipment and broke into three pieces -- one of the breaks coming roughly where Brosnan and her husband, Steven Courtney, were originally supposed to have been sitting.
``I don't know if it was luck or fate or fortune, or who was watching out for us,'' Brosnan told a news conference yesterday at Legacy Emanuel Hospital, her husband sitting next to her in a wheelchair wearing a yellow hospital smock. ``Where we ended up, we were much further back ... which is what saved our lives.''
Brosnan, 43, and Courtney, 45, are biologists and head the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute in Portland. They were flying home from Bali, where they had been attending a symposium on coral reefs.
Settled in their seats, Brosnan looked out the window at the heavy rain and winds so strong the plane's wings were moving up and down and thought to herself, ``There's no lights. It's pitch black. Not even a glow.''
When the pilot came on to tell everyone to fasten their seatbelt, his message was curt and made Brosnan feel very nervous at a time she normally enjoys.
``I gripped the sides of the seat,'' she said. ``It felt like we were just about to take off. And suddenly the plane went `gee-boom.' And it took off again, slammed back down, and I remember thinking, `This can't be happening.
``The panels on the ceiling started to fall down and just float through the air. Everything started to collapse all around us. I remember thinking, `This is it. I'm going to die. People don't survive plane crashes.'"
``The next thing I knew, we were being thrown around. Steven described it as a rollercoaster ride, which is exactly what it was. Something sucked me out of my seat and threw me across the plane. It was the plane turning on its side. I landed flat on my back against the window.''
She looked up and saw a fireball move across the passenger compartment where she was originally supposed to be sitting. Flames and smoke were moving towards her.
``I thought, this is it. I'm going to die. I remember thinking, `I wonder what it would be like to be burned to death. And hearing the crackling get louder. I just curled up into a ball like this and I waited for the flames to come.''
Courtney was thinking the same thing as he watched the flames coming toward him.
But the flames never reached them. The fuselage split apart, and Brosnan and Courtney were in the tail section that skidded away. She got up and soon found her husband and they gave each other a big hug. Then smoke started coming in, and Brosnan thought she had escaped the flames only to die in the smoke.
``I started thinking about my kids, who are grown up. My son is at the Coast Guard Academy and my daughter went to college. The kids are OK. If I was going to die, maybe this is an OK time.''
But someone managed to open a hatch, which let smoke out and air in. Realizing the exit door was underneath them, making it impossible to open, and that there was no way out to the rear, Courtney began herding everyone out the front.
RSS