Survivors Recount Tale of Fiery Texas Jet Crash : Most Who Lived Were Seated in Aft of Plane

The “no smoking” light was illuminated, rain lashed against the small windows and the wide body of the plane began to shake.

Jay Slusher, 33, a father of three from Glendale, Ariz., cinched the belt in seat 42B tighter and tighter with each bump. It felt as though the plane was being pushed from above. He looked over at a flight attendant--”her eyes got bigger and bigger.”

Then Delta Flight 191 slammed into the ground short of one of the long runways at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Saw Plane Break Apart

John K. Moore, in the 35th row, saw the plane break apart above him. He had changed seats twice during the flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., each time moving farther back to have more room to read.

“Everybody in the row in front of me . . . was gone,” he said in an interview Saturday.

In all, 31 persons--most, if not all, seated in the smoking section at the tail of the L-1011--survived to tell about the final seconds of the worst air disaster in Texas history. The crash, during a sudden and ferocious rainstorm Friday evening, took 130 lives.

Some, such as Slusher, escaped with only scratches. Eight surviving passengers were severely burned. The back rows of the airplane, designated as the smoking section, were the only rows that did not burst into flames on impact.

“This is the first time that smoking saved my life,” said Slusher, a 33-year-old computer programmer for American Express who was on a business trip.

Two nonsmokers, Juanita Williams, 55, and Annie Grace Edwards, had changed their seats to sit in the smoking section with a friend, Kathleen Wright, 49, of Fort Lauderdale. Williams and Edwards were released from the hospital Saturday; Wright remained in critical but stable condition.

Wanted to Read

Moore, 43, executive vice president of Loveman’s Department Store in Chattanooga, Tenn., had given up smoking a month ago but moved back in the plane during the flight because he wanted to read rather than watch the movie.

“I was fortunate, and I just thank the good Lord I was spared,” he said from his hospital room. He suffered cuts on his leg and face that required 19 stitches.

After leaving Fort Lauderdale, surviving passengers said, the pilot announced that he expected some turbulence during the flight. But the flight was relatively smooth until it neared Dallas, and passengers were told that the plane was being put in a holding pattern but that there was no reason for concern.

After about 20 minutes, a flight attendant announced that the plane had been cleared to land. The plane made several slight turns as it approached the airport, passengers said, and the ride got rougher.

Could Hear Rain

“Everyone seemed calm. No one was talking. All you could hear was the rain,” Slusher said.

“The lower we got, the harder the rain got. It felt like something was on top of us, pushing us to the ground.

“I have felt bad turbulence and bad downdrafts before, but nothing like this.”

The plane was in trouble. “I thought to myself: ‘We’re going to crash,’ ” Slusher said, but he dismissed the thought. “You never think it will happen to you.”

‘Going Full Throttle’

Then the engines revved up, “like the pilot was trying to pull out of a wind shear. It felt like he was going full throttle,” Slusher said.

Christopher (Johnny) Meier, 35, of Temple, Tex., had a window seat. “I saw the ground coming up,” he said. “Then we hit. The plane bounced once. Then it bounced again.”

The tail section tilted and Meier, on only the third airplane flight of his life, found himself clutching the arm rest to keep from sliding out.

“I opened my eyes,” said Moore, the Tennessee businessman, “and there I was, dangling 30 feet above the grass, still strapped into my seat belt. I thought: ‘I’ve either arrived in heaven or on earth.’ I unbuckled my seat belt and fell to the ground.”

‘Sent an Angel’

Annie Edwards, who couldn’t get her seat belt loose, doesn’t even know how she was freed. “I think the Lord sent an angel to do it because I couldn’t,” she said.

Slusher put his hands against the seat in front of him, bracing himself. A moment later, he could see the ground on his right and “a flash of orange flame coming toward me on the left. I thought everything was over, that we were going to explode.”

He unbuckled his seat belt and fell. “My feet were moving by the time I hit the ground,” he said.

Moans and cries could be heard through the wind-blown rain. The survivors with minor injuries helped pull others from the wreckage. Three of those who survived were flight attendants.

Only a few months before, the airport and area hospitals had participated in an emergency drill designed to prepare for just such a disaster.

Residents Offer Blood

“That preparation may have made possible additional survivors who might otherwise not have made it,” Texas Gov. Mark White said at a news conference. Hundreds of area residents drove to Parkland Hospital, and the other four hospitals where the injured were taken, to offer to give blood Friday night.

The brush with death did not make most of the survivors decide to give up flying.

“I’ll probably fly home to Chattanooga--on Delta,” Moore said.

Slusher vowed to “make sure the weather is good” before boarding another airplane.

Several of the survivors said they thought the rear of an airplane was the safest place to sit.

And when investigators poked around in the tail section later Friday night in search of the boxes containing the flight and voice recorders, they stumbled upon a pair of unlikely survivors of Flight 191.

Two black Labrador retrievers, frightened but unharmed, scampered to safety.