I had a premonition of a plane crash. Minutes later, I was standing on the pilot’s severed arm.

This happened a few years ago, but it’s been haunting me on and off ever since. I feel like I need to get it off my chest.

There was a guy I’d seen flying a few times. We weren’t close; I wasn’t his instructor, just another pilot at the same airfield. But I recognized him and his plane.

His plane had been grounded for about 5 weeks due to engine maintenance. It was his first flight back after all that work had been done. For some reason, I couldn’t shake a bad feeling about it. Call it gut instinct, paranoia, or whatever… something just felt wrong. I had this overwhelming sense that the engine would fail.

Despite not being his instructor or even knowing him well, I approached him before his flight and went over engine failure procedures with him. Specifically, I drilled him on what to do if the engine failed on takeoff:

“If you lose power on takeoff, don’t try to turn back. Keep it straight ahead or make a shallow turn only if you’ve got the altitude.”

I must’ve repeated that point to him for at least 20 minutes. He was polite, nodded along, and repeated the procedures back to me correctly. It seemed like he absorbed what I was saying. By the time we were done, I felt content that he understood the danger and knew what to do if the worst happened.

But there was still a nagging sense of dread. Something deep down kept telling me it wasn’t going to be enough.

I went inside the airport manager’s office, trying to convince myself that he was going to be fine. Then I heard a frantic, terrified mayday call over the radio. His voice was cracking, raw with panic. I bolted outside, heart racing, to see what was happening.

I saw his plane already struggling, just after takeoff. The engine had failed, mid-climb…exactly the scenario I had drilled him about.

For those who don’t know, if a plane’s engine fails right after takeoff, the worst thing you can do is try to turn back to the runway. The plane is flying low and slow, and turning sharply at that altitude causes the plane to lose lift. It will stall, meaning the wings stop generating enough lift to keep the plane in the air.

If the stall happens while turning, it often leads to a spin, the plane essentially spirals uncontrollably toward the ground. That’s exactly what happened. He panicked, tried to turn back, and the plane stalled and spun, making a tight, sickening corkscrew motion straight into the trees and ground.

The sound it made was something I’ll never forget. It was a series of sickening, crunching thuds as the plane clipped the tops of trees, followed by a final, deeper crunch as it slammed into the earth. No explosion, no raging fire, just smoke and faint smouldering.

I jumped into the airport pickup truck with my ramp buddy and we drove to the crash site, desperately hoping he was alive. As I approached the wreckage, everything was twisted metal and broken trees. I was picking my way through the brush, rushing toward the remains of the plane, hoping there was something I could do to help him.

Out of nowhere, a doctor who had arrived moments before me called out.

“Hey, you’re stepping on his humerus.”

yes there are a lot of doctors that hang out at airports

I looked down. Sure enough, I was standing on a broken piece of his body…part of his humerus, not the whole thing. But the horror of what he said didn’t really register in the moment.

I looked up, and that’s when I saw his body. It was mostly intact, but horribly smushed, like the impact had collapsed him into himself. His skin was torn and bloodied, sunken in, but parts of him were still recognizable.

That’s when it hit me. Hard. The shock, the horror, the guilt. I felt woozy and stumbled away from the wreckage, barely making it a few steps before violently throwing up. My legs buckled, and I had to sit down a little further from the crash site, shaking uncontrollably.

Everything felt surreal. I had this twisted premonition about the engine failing, tried desperately to prevent disaster, and then watched it play out anyway. And then I found myself literally standing on a piece of him.

I kept replaying that day over and over in my head. I wasn’t his instructor. I barely knew him. But something told me to warn him. And when he ignored it, it felt like I failed him.

TL;DR:

A few years ago, a pilot I barely knew was about to fly for the first time after his plane spent 5 weeks in maintenance for engine work. I had a premonition the engine would fail, so I drilled him on what to do if it did. Minutes later, I heard his frightened mayday call, ran outside, and watched him suffer an engine failure, panic, and crash. At the crash site, a doctor told me I was standing on part of his humerus. I threw up violently. It still haunts me.