A Passenger Tells of Brush with Death Aboard a Jet Landing During a Tornado in Memphis

We touched down and then suddenly bounced back up off the runway fourty, maybe fifty feet in the air. As we bounced off of the runway the whole plane started to roll over, right wing over left". A half-second after that a huge gust of wind caught the plane under the right wing and we started to flip over. I thought, O God, this is it.

When my U.S. Airways Jet, which filled to capacity, left Los Angeles earlier that morning the skies were clear and blue. The first three-quarters of the flight was smooth as glass but as we neared Memphis, maybe thirty or fourty minutes out, our flight got rough, by far the roughest I ever experienced.

The closer we came to Memphis the worse it got. The usual announcements about remaining in your seat and keeping your seat belt on were made.by the pilot only this time it was very different from all the other times I'd heard it. The pilot's voice sounded like he definitely had his hands full. I will never forget what happened in the next few minutes. I didn't start to really worry until then.

I don't how it happened but about five minutes from landing all of us in the passenger cabin heard the control tower talking to the pilot and what he said sent me past worry. The voice from the control tower said, "we have tornado warnings here and wind gusts up to 60 it's your call if you want to try it".

It's silly what you think about sometimes. I was sitting on the right side of the plane in a window seat next to a very attractive young lady and I wondered if my fears showed . All conversation among the passengers had stopped 10 minutes before this and we were being pushed around all over the place. There was loud thunder and lightning. People started getting airsick. Little children started to cry. The wings were dropping twenty to thirty feet before we recovered and it happened over and over.

The flight attendants took their seats and strapped in. We broke through the low clouds but it only got worse. I remember thinking if we're caught in a gust while we're touching down what's going to happen. The girl next to me, who I hadn't said a word to the entire flight, took my hand and held onto it tight. I think I said, "Don't worry it's going to be fine."

In the worst conditions I'd ever seen on an airplane we went in for our landing.

A strong gust caught the plane just as we touched down. As we started to roll over some people started, not screaming, but more of a half-scream, half gasp. Like the sound of terror. When the plane was almost flying over the runway sideways I kept waiting for sound of the left wing smashing into the ground, and that would be the end, but it never came.

Somehow that pilot stopped our the plane from rolling over. We recovered and hit the runway again, but this time the bounce was not nearly as severe. The third time we hit the runway we stayed down.

Everybody started cheering and shouting and clapping. Even the flight attendants. The girl next to me was so relieved she was crying. A minute later we were taxi-ing to the terminal. In a quivering shaking voice I'll never forget the flight attendant gave the end of flight "thank you for flying U.S. Airways ".

A few minutes later I was walking through a terminal of people that had no idea how close our flight came to ending in disaster. I later learned that ours was
the last flight that they allowed to land before they "officially" closed the airport due to the storm.