RR_NDB, you might consider what I said about feeling acceleration and not velocity. They might have felt the plane shuddering and all that. They'd not feel weightless all the way down.
The simplest way to ram this "you do not feel velocity" concept down people's disbelief is simply noting that we are rotating around the axis of the Earth at speeds Jetliners can roughly equal even when sitting in our chairs. Then the Earth is whizzing around the Sun in its orbit. The Sun is orbiting within the Milky Way galaxy. And ... Well, if they don't get it by then they're hopeless.
The velocity may have changed, that cannot happen without acceleration. So any changes in velocity that took place with enough acceleration to be detected by humans would be noted. But it might not be noted and interpreted correctly.