In a ghastly recounting, Joanie Feathers remembered her boyfriend's macabre jest just moments before the plan e they were on erupted into flames "like an atomic bomb." Onboard Pan Am Flight 1736 during the catastrophic incident in which it collided with KLM Flight 4805 on the runway, she witnessed horrors including a woman "cut in half" by her seatbelt and another who was "on fire." The harrowing event at Tenerife Los Rodeos Airport on March 27, 1977, stands as the most lethal aviation accident ever , claiming 583 lives.
The chaos ensued following a terror attack at Gran Canaria airport, leading to unexpected re-routing to the ill-equipped Los Rodeos, per LadBible. Weather, redirection stress, and a tragic miscommunication precipitated the disaster as KLM attempted a premature takeoff. All passengers aboard the KLM flight perished, alongside 335 from the Pan Am flight.
Among the 61 miraculous survivors were Joanie and her then-boyfriend, Jack Ridout, who were en route for a Mediterranean cruise. Recalling her pre-collision fears to him in a Daytona Beach Journal interview, his haunting reply was: "Don't worry. If he hits us, you won't feel a thing," he had said.
"Don't worry. If he hits us, you won't feel a thing," he told her. The woman's wariness was so intense that she declined an offer to have a drink in the upstairs lounge, opting instead to fasten her seatbelt immediately.
Within moments, she was sitting in a KLM cabin torn apart, the upstairs bar obliterated around her.
