The British-Pakistani business tycoon trapped aboard the missing Titan submersible along with his son and three others survived another life-altering ordeal – a terrifying “deep plunge” on a plane that made him contemplate “all of the opportunities he’d missed” and how much he still wanted to teach his children.
Shahzada Dawood’s nightmare incident in the skies was revealed by his psychologist wife, Christine, who wrote a blog post for her life-coaching business about the couple’s harrowing episode in January 2019, The Daily Beast reported.
“I should have known when they cancelled our flight and put us on the next one. We should have taken the sign, gone back home and had a long and generous breakfast,” she wrote.
“But we didn’t, and this flight became one of the most memorable ones of my life,” added Christine, who did not specify when the flight took place or where they flying to and from.
She goes on to explain that everything was normal for most of the flight until the seatbelt signs came on ahead of the landing.
“The plane took a deep plunge. I later read that a plane doesn’t drop more than three to five meters during turbulence, but my stomach at that moment would beg to differ. The whole cabin let out one simultaneous cry, which turned to a whimper and then silence,” Christine wrote.
“The plane plunged again and shook left and right. I felt like a grain in a big bag of sand, or a boxer being soundly defeated – punched from all directions,” she continued. “I clutched my armrests as if that would make a difference. I needed something to hold on to, something stable in a shaky metal tube thousands of feet above the ground.”
She recounted how her husband later told her “that he was thinking of all the opportunities he’d missed and how much he still wanted to teach our children.”
Christine said some of the passengers prayed while others screamed profanities.
But she said her coping mechanism was “calmness.”
“Not the good kind, though. It was the stillness stemming from absolute terror. I was frightened like never before in my life. I wasn’t even able to wipe away the tears running down my face or move my head to look around,” she wrote.
But things suddenly got worse.
“Shake left, shake right! My head hit the window. Then came an announcement. It was the captain telling us that he would try to land from a different angle. The engines roared and we gained height again,” Christine went on.
“My husband faced me, our eyes locked and our hands interlinked. No words were needed. He was as scared as I was and yet we were together. ‘Until death do…’ No, don’t go there!” she wrote.
She said she started praying as she grasped Dawood’s hand.
Finally, the plane landed and screeched to a halt.
“We had made it. We had survived. But I still couldn’t move. I still couldn’t comprehend. We were safely on the ground and yet my throat felt as if a noose was tightly around it. I felt a squeeze of my hand and heard somebody talking to me, but I was frozen still,” she wrote.
“It’s then that I realised that my life had changed and would never be the same again,” the life coach added.
Dawood is trapped at sea with his son, Sulaiman, 19, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding and OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush.
On Thursday, the Titan’s 96-hour oxygen supply was expected to run out by about 7 a.m.
Experts have theorized that the five people onboard could be making last-ditch efforts to conserve the precious air by remaining still and silent.
