October 19, 2007
[Insert deity here] nearly smites Trojans
The USC Trojans had a harrowing flight into South Bend for this weekend's Notre Dame football game. The team's charter flight encountered extreme turbulence, causing the plane to lose altitude suddenly and leading to at least one aborted landing.
USC's football team, coaches and staff endured several terrifying minutes as their chartered flight to South Bend plummeted amid a severe thunderstorm, forcing the pilot to abort his first landing attempt.About 125 people, including 82 players, coach Pete Carroll and most of the coaching staff faced a harrowing end to their trip across the country for Saturday's game.
"There was a moment there when I was thinking, 'This is it,' " Dennis Slutak, USC's director of football operations, told The Los Angeles Times.
USC sports information director Tim Tessalone told The Associated Press on Friday that some passengers were thrown from their seats by turbulence as lightning cracked around the storm-tossed aircraft about 9 p.m. Thursday.
"It was a little bit of a roller coaster drop there for a minute," he said. "We had some people fly out of some seats. Everybody is fine, but it was a frightening little dip there."
Comments:
gatorstud said:
posted on October 19, 2007 4:22 PM — 69.95.111.248 — link — abuse?
as some of you know...i live about twenty minutes east of south bend......and them boys had every right to be scared......the storm that went through last night wasn't supposed to be bad...but he within an hour..all hell broke loose....we had five or six reports of funnel clouds spotted and a few touched down, but wheather officials say just one touched down......
nappannee, indiana got hit hard.....town is shut down and people are trying to cope with what happened....lots of injuries...no fatalities reported yet.....
i couldn't even imagine what it was like being on an airplane......
and why a pilot would want to land in the middle of that crap is beyond me.....passenger safety should always come first...life is too important to gamble with......
go gators....and hokies
FanoftheGame said:
posted on October 19, 2007 5:36 PM — 198.211.223.194 — link — abuse?
No telling if this is going to have any effect on any of USC's players come Saturday. I've been a part of 3 emergency landings and it is something that tends to stick with you for a while. Thank God everyone is safe and God forbid we ever have to experience another tragedy like Marshall's.
gatorhippy
posted on October 22, 2007 7:50 AM — 70.121.185.56 — link — abuse?
said:
Back in the mid-ninties, the Gators experienced a similiar flight forcing pilots to land the plane on a return trip from Kentucky...
Ellis Johnson was so spooked he refused to get back on the plane and the coaching staff was forced to rent a car and one of them had to drive back with Johnson on the ground...
Johnson NEVER flew with the team again for his final season and a half with the Gators forcing the the staff to send him by car with one of the coaches...
Regan said:
posted on October 19, 2007 4:03 PM — 64.12.116.136 — link — abuse?Screw team game-day loyalties...thank goodness those kids are alright...