In a ghastly recounting, Joanie Feathers remembered her boyfriend’s macabre jest simply moments before the plane they had been on erupted into flames “like an atomic bomb.”
Onboard Pan Am Flight 1736 during the catastrophic incident during which it collided with KLM Flight 4805 on the runway, she witnessed horrors together with a girl “cut in half” by her seatbelt and one other who was “on fire.”
The harrowing occasion at Tenerife Los Rodeos Airport on March 27, 1977, stands because the most deadly aviation accident ever, claiming 583 lives.
The chaos ensued following a terror assault at Gran Canaria airport, resulting in sudden re-routing to the sick-outfitted Los Rodeos, per LadBible.
Weather, redirection stress, and a tragic miscommunication precipitated the catastrophe as KLM tried a untimely takeoff. All passengers aboard the KLM flight perished, alongside 335 from the Pan Am flight.
Among the 61 miraculous survivors had been Joanie and her then-boyfriend, Jack Ridout, who had been en route for a Mediterranean cruise. Recalling her pre-collision fears to him in a Daytona Beach Journal interview, his haunting reply was: “Don’t worry. If he hits us, you won’t feel a thing,” he had mentioned.
“Don’t worry. If he hits us, you won’t feel a thing,” he informed her.
The girl’s wariness was so intense that she declined an offer to have a drink within the upstairs lounge, opting as an alternative to lock her seatbelt instantly. Within moments, she was sitting in a KLM cabin torn aside, the upstairs bar obliterated round her.
Recounting the horror, she described witnessing a fellow passenger “cut in half” by a seatbelt and one other with hair curlers engulfed in flames. The couple managed to flee from the particles.
During their scramble for security, Jack paused to help a flight attendant with an emergency exit however needed to flee when an explosion “like an atom bomb” resulted within the attendant’s decapitation.
Afterward, they acquired therapy at a hospital for bodily wounds that healed far faster than the psychological ones.
Now in her 70s and residing in Phoenix, Joani has since braved many flights, although the memory of the disaster lingers. “It’s always on my mind when I get on a plane,” she confided.
