A passenger on the Air Canada jet that smashed into a fire truck as it hurtled down a LaGuardia runway late Sunday night said he witnessed passengers’ humanity rose to the occasion even at their darkest hour.
“I’m feeling particularly rattled. It’s not every day you get into a plane crash,” survivor Jack Cabot, 22, of New York, told The Post soon after the ordeal in which the plane’s pilot and co-pilot were killed and more than 40 others were injured.
The Bombardier CRJ-900 jet originating from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew on board was in the process of landing just before midnight when it collided with a Port Authority fire engine responding to an unrelated emergency call.
Cabot said nothing felt out of the ordinary until the “crazy 12 seconds” when the crash took place.
“It felt like the landing was immediately off,” Cabot said. “There was an incredibly loud bang,” he said. “It was a really, really hard landing,” he said, speaking rapidly as he shared details — still wired from the adrenaline rush.
Cabot recalled seeing “blood everywhere” after the crash, including on the injured passenger right next to him who had injured their face and had blood gushing from their nose.
He said it took about two hours for everyone to get off the plane, and that passengers toward the front of the aircraft had gotten badly stuck and required a lot of help to get free.
But even with dozens injured and the two pilots dead in the cockpit, the badly shaken travelers showed heartening humanity for their fellow survivors, working together to ensure everyone made it out safely.
“Some people really stepped up in that moment, they organized themselves as a group,” he said.
“People were sharing coats. One person used a COVID mask to wipe blood off another person’s face,” he recalled.
A young girl traveling alone for the first time was quickly joined by an older British woman, who sat with her throughout the ordeal.
“There’s always some humanity. Always people trying their best,” Cabot said.
“I still feel like I was one of the lucky ones. There were other people in a lot of pain,” adding that he suffered whiplash from the crash and was waiting to hear if he had a concussion.
He said a flight attendant who had been flung forward by the impact even gave him a beer to help take the edge off after the brush with death.
“It led to my new motto: ‘sit in the middle of the plane and have a beer,’” he joked.
Asked when he would be flying again after what he’d just been through, Cabot responded with typical New York City resilience.
“As soon as I can. I don’t want to let this get in the way of my life.”