rotornut
22nd Jun 2004, 10:11
'Fight or flight' tramples airlines:[SOUTH PINELLAS Edition]
STEVE HUETTEL. St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Jun 20, 2004.
His eyes were closed. Delta's 7 a.m. flight to Atlanta pulled away from Gate 72. The prerecorded safety message aired on video screens. Then, suddenly, the routine shattered when Norris Johnson heard the first passenger yell, "Fire!"
Johnson jumped up, saw a red-orange glow toward the front of the cabin and thought of Richard Reid, the al-Qaida follower who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet with explosives hidden in his shoes. His gut reaction: "I've got to get off this plane."
"I thought it was something someone brought on the plane that ignited prematurely," Johnson later recalled.
All but 12 of the 169 passengers bailed out of the Boeing 757 jet at Tampa International Airport last June 23 in an evacuation that the crew did not order and that Delta Air Lines says was an overreaction to a harmless engine fire. Within minutes, 33 were injured, most from falling off emergency slides. The National Transportation Safety Board still is investigating.
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STEVE HUETTEL. St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Jun 20, 2004.
His eyes were closed. Delta's 7 a.m. flight to Atlanta pulled away from Gate 72. The prerecorded safety message aired on video screens. Then, suddenly, the routine shattered when Norris Johnson heard the first passenger yell, "Fire!"
Johnson jumped up, saw a red-orange glow toward the front of the cabin and thought of Richard Reid, the al-Qaida follower who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet with explosives hidden in his shoes. His gut reaction: "I've got to get off this plane."
"I thought it was something someone brought on the plane that ignited prematurely," Johnson later recalled.
All but 12 of the 169 passengers bailed out of the Boeing 757 jet at Tampa International Airport last June 23 in an evacuation that the crew did not order and that Delta Air Lines says was an overreaction to a harmless engine fire. Within minutes, 33 were injured, most from falling off emergency slides. The National Transportation Safety Board still is investigating.
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