JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In the wake of the deadly Wednesday night collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter, a Jacksonville man shared an unsettling experience during a flight last week from Charlotte to Reagan Washington National Airport.
Adam Lowery, a frequent traveler, stood in his driveway Thursday as he reflected on something he had never experienced before.
“I called my wife when I got to, when I touched down,” Lowery said. “People were taken back by it. I mean, it definitely—for somebody that flies a lot. Like I said, I’ve never experienced that.”
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What should have been a routine landing quickly turned into something else.
“As we’re about to descend, you know, the airplane slows down. I can see the water. And just a typical landing. All of a sudden, the trajectory changes, and the engines rev up, and we start climbing, and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” he said.
Lowery said the plane had to circle around and attempt the landing again.
“I’m thinking, ‘OK, maybe this is a rookie that didn’t know how to land in this airport,’” he said. “But then after the lady sitting next to me referenced seeing the helicopter below us, and then the fact that he did that, and when he made the announcement, I was just thankful, that he was cautious in that way.”
In all his years of flying, this was a first for him.
He said he flew on American Airlines.
The collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight from Kansas killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft, officials said, as they scrutinized the actions of the military pilot after the country’s worst aviation disaster in a generation.
At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of the jet late Wednesday while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
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Lowery’s thoughts are with the families now facing unimaginable loss.
“It just—your heart breaks for them, and you realize there’s a lot of families, you know, that I’m sure are hurt by this tragedy,” he said.
The investigation is ongoing.
News4JAX reached out to American Airlines to get more details about Lowery’s flight and at the time of this publication, we hadn’t heard back.