WATCH: Airline Passenger Reacts in Horror as Pilot Announces He’s Trying To Avoid Midair Collision With Another Plane
A commercial airline passenger managed to record her terrified reaction moments after the pilot announced he was trying to avoid a mid-air collision with a private jet at 23,000 feet over Orlando, FL.
The Allegiant flight 485 was headed from Ft. Lauderdale to Lexington, KY, Sunday when the pilot announced he was taking evasive action to miss another plane that was in his path.
Passenger Jerrica Thacker recorded herself crying in her seat with her T-shirt pulled up over her nose and mouth, and hand to her forehead, as she waited out the tense moments before the plane stabilized.
“Well, at that time we thought it was turbulence, which was still scary at the time because I had never been through that,” Thacker told Jim Scuitto on CNN News Central Monday. “But when he came on the intercom and let us know that we were actually trying to miss the other airplane, it was like it intensified all that fear that happened. And it was like a roller coaster the way that we had to go up and down to miss the plane and then level back out to the height we were supposed to be at.”
Scuitto asked what the atmosphere was like onboard when the pilot made the announcement.
“People started crying, you could hear people praying,” Thacker said. “And everyone who was at a window seat started to close their windows because everybody was too scared to look outside at what was around us.”
A flight attendant required medical attention after being tossed around as the plane climbed higher. Thacker said the woman hit her head and lay on the cabin floor for several minutes before she was able to be moved to the back of the plane.
On the recording, Thacker can be seen giving a relieved thumbs up to signal the end of the terrifying ordeal.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident.
Watch the clip above via CNN.