The plane’s dropping. I love you: Terrified tourists’ goodbye texts after jet nosedives
HOLIDAYMAKERS terrified their plane was going to crash texted their families to say they loved them after it ‘nose-dived’ for several minutes.
Passengers were in tears as oxygen masks were released when the plane began dropping about 30 minutes into the Jet2 flight from Ibiza to Leeds.
One passenger said ‘all hell broke loose’ when the captain announced they were making an ‘emergency descent’, before the plane was diverted to Barcelona.
Nicola Tye, 39, who was travelling without her husband and two children and filmed the drama on her phone, said: ‘All I could think was I’m not going to get to see them again.
‘I was able to write a text to my husband. I said: “The plane is dropping, if anything happens I love you”.
‘It was awful after we landed. When it’s all happening your brain goes into shock but when we landed that’s when it all hit us. There was a woman at the front who could
‘Felt like we were falling out of the sky’
not be consoled.’ Tom Miller, 39, who had been in Ibiza with friends, messaged his wife to say: ‘I love you, babe.’
‘The plane was started diving down in a 40 to 50-degree dive,’ he said. ‘It seemed to go on forever but looking back it was probably only a couple of minutes. It felt like we were falling out of the sky.
‘There was nothing but sea beneath us and we were going down. So I texted my wife and told her I loved her. What else do you do?’
Physiotherapist John Hatfield, 33, said several oxygen masks on his row failed to drop and he was forced to rip off a metal panel to get them out.
He said: ‘Eventually we managed to get the masks on – but it was quite terrifying.
‘Luckily it was me, but I hate to think what could have happened if it was a child or an old person who could not reach or was not strong enough to pull it open.’
He added that the flight had been very hot as the air conditioning failed. After dropping down, the plane levelled out and landed at Barcelona, where passengers waited four hours for a replacement aircraft.
Some, however, were too scared to board the return flight.
Jet2 said the emergency landing last Sunday was due to a ‘minor technical issue’, adding: ‘Our highly-trained crew followed procedure and made a controlled descent before landing safely.
‘We would like to apologise to customers who were affected. Their safety will always be our number one priority.’