‘I can cross plane crash off my bucket list’: AC624 passenger recounts harrowing experience

HALIFAX – Just a couple of days ago, Catherine Ouellet and her 80-year-old aunt thought their best memories would be from their vacation in Florida.

It turns out it was the plane ride home that would stick with them.

They were aboard Air Canada flight 624, which crash landed in Halifax early Sunday morning.

“People were jostled forward in the seats and things. My aunt hit her nose on the seat in front of her. So she has a small gash on her nose that didn’t require stitches and we’re not sure how her arm got broken or fractured,” Ouellet said outside the QEII hospital in Halifax.

She and her aunt Ruth Macumber were among 25 people taken to hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Ouellet was released Sunday morning, but her aunt remains in hospital.

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Ouellet is praising the quick action of first responders and Good Samaritans, including a man she calls “an angel.” The man was sitting with the two women in row 20 and helped Macumber, who uses a walker, off the plane.

They could smell jet fuel and there was concern at the time the plane could catch on fire, so passengers were trying to quickly get away from the wreckage.

But Macumber was finding it too difficult to walk in the snow during the storm.

“At one point he said, ‘I’m going to take you and throw you over my shoulder until we get to where everybody else is on the tarmac and as far away from the plane as we possibly can,'” Ouellet recalled.

“And she says, ‘no, no,no.’ And he goes, ‘yes’ and he did. He just lifted her, hoisted her up and threw her over his shoulder and off we went to join the people on the tarmac.”

The family is now hoping to identify the man so they can thank him properly.

Meanwhile, a representative from Air Canada has visited Macumber in the hospital and the airline is arranging for at-home care for her.

Ouellet is recovering but still experiences some pain and has been prescribed medication.

She has nothing but praise for the response and believes she will fly again.

“I guess I can cross plane crash off my bucket list,” she said. “I don’t feel it can happen again because I feel it’s a once in a lifetime experience. But I survived it.”