When the Plane Crashed: A Survivor’s Account

Read the commentary and check out the pics at the bottom of this article... 

SEAIR plane overshoots runway-There were no major casualties reported though some passengers sustained minor injuries and were taken to the Philippine Airlines Clinic near Villamor Airbase in Pasay City.”

http://uw1.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=110190

Troubled landing for Boracay vacationers at NAIA - MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) Passengers of a flight from Boracay were "shaken" when their plane swerved to the lawn of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport's domestic runway upon touchdown before sunset on Sunday. No one was hurt. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/metro/view_article.php?article_id=120923

(Update) 2 hurt in Sea Air plane mishap at domestic airport- A Dornier 328 plane of Sea Air lost control during landing and ploughed through a grassy patch at the Manila Domestic Airport in Pasay City late Sunday afternoon…

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/81978/32-hurt-in-Sea-Air-plane-mishap-at-domestic-airport

SEAIR plane from Caticlan overshoots runway- …overshot the grassy part at the end of Runway 13-31…”

http://www.mukamo.com/seair-plane-from-caticlan-overshoots-runway/

Overshoot my ass! The media people made it look so easy, when in fact the headline could have been more tragic, as in “30 fried and crispy unrecognizable bits landed yesterday…”

Just thinking about it makes me sick.

I should know. I was there.

Seair flight DG 046 took off from Caticlan Airport on that cool Sunday afternoon of February 24th a few minutes delayed. There was a slight drizzle that made the runway slippery, but the plane was a German-built Dornier 328 touted as a new generation aircraft, one of the fastest and most advanced jetprop planes in the world. 

The flight was full, so we (I was with my friend Sandy Arellano) did not complain when we were assigned Seats 12A and 12B, the last row just beside the lavatory and close to the rear emergency exit. Sandy sat by the window and I took the aisle seat.

As the plane took off, we enjoyed one last look at Boracay and its neighboring islands. The view was breathtakingly beautiful, making me (and I’m sure all the others in the plane) plan when I could be back. I started thinking of an excuse like the one I just had to visit the island, which was to support the Manila-Boracay sailing regatta events. 

The flight was uneventful, but on my aisle seat I couldn’t help but observe our flight attendant. Aside from her obvious nervousness when the plane hit some slight turbulence, she looked cool and confident like a beauty pageant contestant as she served the usual snacks and drinks. 

As I looked on, I found myself asking how trained she was in coping with an emergency.  I chuckled to myself as I remembered the times I have seen people panic like crazy in a real emergency. 

Having gone through a few near-fatal accidents myself, believe me when I tell you that people can act funny in front of the real stuff, wetting their pants, shaking like an epileptic, or worse, throwing up on you.

When I saw Taal Lake, I pointed it out to Sandy. We were just a few minutes from Manila. We took turns trying to recognize different places as the plane started its descent: Puerto Azul, Corregidor, the Sierra Madre… 

Suddenly, Sandy tapped me and whispered:

“Look at the stewardess. She looks agitated. She just hung up the plane’s intercom. I think she was talking to the pilot…”

I looked and my heart skipped a beat. 

The stewardess was frantically advising some passengers waiting in line at the lavatory to take their seats. It was a short plane, so she walked along the whole length of the plane looking at the seat belts, monotonously repeating the words “Please fasten your seatbelts…” forcing a smile…

I smelled fear! No, rather I saw it in her eyes, the twitch of her arms, the hardening of the muscles. Uh oh…

Sandy must have sensed it too but didn’t say a word. A thousand things went through my mind as we felt the plane descend. I looked at the emergency exit to my right and rehearsed what I would do when the worst happened. 

How would it end? Just then, a crazy thought entered my head: what if the pilot is an Al-Qaeda operative who was trained to crash the plane on the Stock Exchange Tower? That would be cool!

My imagination was jolted back to the present when I saw the familiar surroundings of the runway. The plane was only a few feet above the ground. I closed my eyes and started tensing my whole body when I felt the plane hit the ground with a strong thud…thud…THUD!

The landing was not smooth. Sandy looked at me and we both knew something was wrong. The plane was on the ground, going very fast, when I felt my body being thrown to the right as the plane swerved sharply to the left. We were not slowing down. The runway disappeared and as I looked out the window, I saw nothing but grass. 

This was going to be one hell of a crash!

Everything happened in a matter of seconds. I heard loud noises as the plane sounded like it was breaking up. 

I thought: so this is the sound of a new generation aircraft on its death throes, doors shaking loose from their hinges, carts hitting walls, gallons of freshly excreted human liquids (I was just beside the lavatory, remember) sloshing around ready to unleash their humorous but toxic potential…

Next, I saw sparks as the propeller hit the ground. I could see smoke just outside the window. I smelled something burning, and worse, as we pitched, rolled, and screeched to a grinding halt, I recognized the aroma of jet fuel.

“We crashed!” That was all I could say, stupidly stating the obvious.

Inside the plane, pandemonium reigned. 

The stewardess stood up and tried to open the main door, but it wouldn’t budge as our pilot had deftly inserted the front of the plane into a concrete canal. I never realized there were canals just alongside the runway, but perhaps they were there for this purpose?

People were shouting, some were crying; then, we heard the pilot:

“Use another exit because there is a fuel leak on the left side!”

Just then, the panicking stewardess went to the left exit door, opened it, and led the other passengers as they scrambled out. Out they went like lemmings, jumping into the growing pool of jet fuel, when suddenly there was an explosion…KA-BOOM!

Of course, it never happened, but I had this image in my mind as I remembered what the pilot had just said. I went straight for the right exit door. It opened instantly, I grabbed Sandy’s hand, and we jumped off the plane. Others followed us as we rolled over to the grass and started running as far away as possible from the aircraft to avoid becoming just another fried human statistic.

When Sandy and I were a safe distance from the plane, we turned around, took in the whole macabre scene, and like any other ordinary Pinoy, we brought out our digital cameras and started taking some photos.

We walked towards the other passengers, and since we exited at the right rear emergency door, we had to cross the canal in front of the plane to reach them. There, dazed by the adrenalin rush pumping our hearts that we felt like our heads were just about to explode, we waited for instructions, taking more photos, just looking around, and feeling lucky to have escaped.

People started embracing each other, happy to be alive. Many were crying, looks of panic and relief on their faces. Many, obviously, had wet their pants and were shaking like they had Parkinson’s. Not me, though. I have been through worse things, and my brain was clicking at warp speed as it assessed the damage and prepared for more danger.

NAIA’s emergency response team arrived after a few minutes. A van came to transport us; where to, we did not know. The van wasn’t big enough for 32 passengers, so Sandy and I stayed behind with a few others and waited for another vehicle. A bigger bus came to pick us up.

I was astonished at the lack of coordination of the ground crew or whoever is in charge. We were taken outside the airport and straight to the Seair office where we were dumped and asked to wait what would come next. 

No one came, and no one said anything. So we just waited.

Then, someone asked us to get back on the bus. We were brought to the airport’s Medical Clinic for examination. Apparently, this was routine procedure. 

The examination was simple. They assessed our physical appearance and checked our blood pressure. They took down our name, age and telephone numbers for the record and asked us for some identification. We learned that two older passengers obtained leg injuries by jumping off the plane. Another one had a sky rocketing blood pressure.

A gentleman beside us recounted that he was in the front seat near the left door. As the plane was skidding, a divider broke loose and almost hit him. I recalled a “Surfboard” sized panel falling in the front end near the cockpit as the plane plunged into the concrete canal. He caught it and saved a few other passengers from getting crushed or decapitated.

The Seair staff led us to the departure area of the domestic airport and gave us food. I also saw a Seair official instructing a younger employee on their policy for public relations and disaster damage control:

“Huwag na huwag ka magpapa-interview kahit na kanino!” Don’t allow yourself to be interviewed by anyone!

Priceless.

Then, they brought us back to the Seair office to claim our baggage before we were whisked to a nearby restaurant for free meals. Sandy and I took something as we exchanged stories with the other survivors.

My cell phone rang. It was an old college buddy who is also a sailing aficionado. He asked me where I was, I told him, and we both realized we were just a few feet from each other. It turned out that he was a Seair VP, so we chatted for a few minutes. He was relieved to know I was alright and that the accident didn’t turn out for the worse.

After slogging through our free dinner, Seair called a taxi to take us home. By then, it was a few minutes after 8:00 p.m. I couldn’t believe that two and a half hours have passed since we touched down. I got home by around a quarter to nine, had a hot shower, and despite the adrenalin rushing inside me, I slept like a log.

The whole experience was surreal, dreamlike and bizarre. It is true what they say about the paradox of going through a crisis situation. Everything happens so fast that they pass by in slow motion. Every small detail is deeply etched in the memory, and although I know we were out of that plane less than a minute after it touched down, the wealth of details and actions I went through made those sixty seconds seem like an eternity.

How did I do it? How do we do it? 

It was the adrenalin heightening the survival instinct to fight or take flight. In the case of a plane crash as I had just gone through, it was both; and to date, my recall of the events are clearly engraved in my mind.

I am happy to be alive, and I am happy too that there were no fatalities, but there are two things that continue to bother me.

First, our crash may not have been the most serious emergency in its class: just a skidding 32-seater plane, so what’s the big deal? What bugs me is if we had been in a 747. With over ten times the number of passengers and considerably more fuel in its wings, worse things could have happened. I don’t even want to think about it, and I hope it doesn’t happen again in my lifetime, and certainly not at the NAIA.

Second, Seair does not know how to respond properly in dealing with plane crash survivors, which we are. Seair seems to be ignoring this and takes it lightly, smug and content that no one escaped with something worse than a leg fracture and a galloping blood pressure. 

Seair perhaps forgets that a near-death experience can cause irreparable damage to the soul, the mind, and the memory. I’m sure no one present that day would ever take Seair again, even if it is the only plane left to reach Boracay. 

I’m sure each of the 32 passengers will talk about how Seair treated them, and how it took them ten days to decide that they could try to satisfy our anguish by offering us through an anonymous text message a free plane ticket. 

No letter of apology, no admission of fault, nothing.

Last week, I flew to Dumaguete on a Cebu Pacific Airbus. The plane took off and landed on time, and safely. I enjoyed the flight immensely and noticed that, fortunately, I never developed a phobia for flying.

But do you know what really sucks? 

I haven’t received that Seair plane ticket yet, and nearly four weeks after the plane crash, we still don’t know what really caused it. Was it pilot error, a defective landing gear, or just a mysterious accident? We don’t know.

I guess Seair needs a new tag line: “Fly us and we’ll screw you gladly until you’re fried.”

Damn!

Carlo de Leon
Executive Director
Pinoy Pilgrim Global Foundation Inc.
e-mail: carlofdl <at> pinoypilgrim <dot> org

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Survivors

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Pinoy Pilgrim Executive Director, Carlo F. de Leon

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View from the grass

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Thud!!!

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Rescuers