My Story of Surviving a Plane Crash Landing

My Story of Surviving a Plane Crash Landing”

I remember the smell of jet fuel.

I remember the screaming.

I remember thinking, This is it.

But I didn’t die. And that’s why I’m telling you this.

It happened on a warm April afternoon in 2019.

Flight 708 from Istanbul to Berlin. A standard Airbus A321. I was seated in 14A, window seat, two rows behind the wing.

I had taken this route a dozen times. I was returning home after visiting my father, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. The flight was full—business travelers, families, students. Ordinary people with ordinary plans.

No one boards a flight expecting to live through a crash.

The first part of the flight was uneventful. Clear skies. Coffee, sandwiches, babies crying in the back.

We were about ten minutes from landing, descending into Berlin Tegel Airport, when the turbulence started. Nothing unusual at first. Seatbelt sign on. A few bumps.

Then a sharp jolt shook the cabin—so violent my coffee hit the ceiling and splashed back onto my jeans.

People gasped. The plane tilted hard left, then corrected.

The voice of the captain came over the intercom, calm but tight:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re experiencing some crosswind interference. Please remain seated and follow crew instructions.”

I looked out the window. The clouds had thickened. Rain lashed the glass. We were flying low now, cutting through fog.

That’s when we dropped.

Not a soft descent.

A violent, sickening drop.

The kind your stomach doesn’t catch up with. People screamed. Luggage bins popped open. An oxygen mask fell—just one. A woman two seats ahead started praying in Turkish.

The engines roared louder.

A man in the aisle tried to get up—he was thrown sideways.

The captain’s voice came back, but this time, it wasn’t calm.

“Brace! Brace! Assume crash position!”

Everything after that became a blur.

I clenched the seat in front of me and bent over, forehead on knees. My breathing became shallow. My mind went blank.

And then—

Impact.

It was like being inside a car crash that never ended.

The plane slammed into the ground, bounced, tilted, skidded. Metal screamed against earth. Something exploded underneath. A wing tore off.

The cabin filled with smoke. People were shouting, crying, praying.

We spun sideways and finally stopped—in a grassy field, 400 meters from the runway.

The silence that followed felt louder than the crash.

For a second, no one moved.

Then someone yelled, “GET OUT!”

Flight attendants kicked open the emergency doors. The inflatable slides dropped.

People stumbled over one another, desperate to escape.

My hands were shaking as I unbuckled my seatbelt. My legs felt numb. I grabbed my bag instinctively, then dropped it when I saw smoke pouring from the back of the plane.

I ran. Slid down. Fell hard. Grass and mud smeared my face.

But I was out.

Alive.

Around me, people were limping, coughing, screaming. Sirens blared in the distance.

I turned back.

The plane—what was left of it—sat broken. One engine was gone. Smoke still poured out. But somehow, there was no fire.

That’s what saved us.

Later, in the hospital, we learned what happened.

There was a sudden mechanical failure in the left landing gear combined with dangerous crosswinds. The pilots tried to stabilize it, but the failure occurred just 400 feet from touchdown. There was no time to circle back.

They crash-landed manually—skidding us across the wet grass and off the runway.

Miraculously, no one died.

But 17 people were injured. Four seriously.

And for 137 passengers, including me, everything changed.

The days that followed were strange.

My body was fine—bruises, a sprained ankle. But my mind wasn’t.

I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing the clouds before the crash. The moment of impact. The silence afterward.

I’d wake up at night hearing phantom screams. My therapist later called it survivor’s guilt.

One day, a woman named Lena messaged me on Facebook. She had been in seat 14B, next to me.

“Did we really make it?” she wrote.

We talked for hours. About the crash. About our lives. About how surreal it was to be alive when we should be dead.

We still talk sometimes.

I’ve never flown again.

Maybe one day I will. But not yet.

I still get nervous when I hear engines overhead. Still freeze when I see planes on TV making emergency landings. People say flying is the safest way to travel, and statistically, they’re right.

But stats mean nothing when you’ve felt your own death racing toward you.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Life is fragile—not just physically, but emotionally.

We live like we’re invincible, but the truth is, it only takes one second for everything to change.

The people around you? Strangers one minute, family the next.

And most importantly—walk away if you can. Everything else is noise.

I’m not writing this for sympathy.

I’m writing this for the person who thinks it “can’t happen to them.”

It can.

And if it does, I hope you have someone like Lena sitting next to you. Someone who holds your hand in the dark. Someone who reminds you to breathe.

Because sometimes, breathing is all you can do.

April 17, 2019.

The day I stopped believing in ordinary days.

The day I learned what survival feels like.

And the day I promised myself:

If I live, I will never waste life again.