NASCAR exec can’t recall jet’s impact, but comes away with much more
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION
By David Poole
dpoole@charlotteobserver.com
Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009
Every time she takes off in an airplane, Amber Wells silently counts to 120.
“If something’s going to happen,” she says, “I figure it’ll be in the first two minutes.”
Thursday afternoon, Wells made it just past 90.
Sitting in a window seat - 20F - on US Airways Flight 1549 from New York to Charlotte, she heard a loud thump. Then, she says, she saw fire and then black smoke come from the plane’s right engine.
“The first thing I said was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ “ she says. “As many times as I’d counted to 120, it had happened.”
There was the smell of smoke.
Then, Wells says, “a flight attendant behind us said, ‘We need a fire extinguisher.’ “
Then things quickly got quiet, says Wells, the Charlotte-based senior manager of licensed attractions for NASCAR. She was on her way home after meetings with exhibit designers for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
“The only thing you could hear,” she says, “was people mumbling prayers.”
Wells found her cell phone. She typed out a text message to her husband, Josh, who works at World Racing Group in Charlotte. She wanted him to know she loved him and their 8½-month-old daughter, Rayley, in case the worst happened. She sent it at 3:29 p.m.
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “Prepare for impact,” he said.
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