Passengers aboard a crippled Texas-bound JetBlue flight described their panic as the smoke-filled jet was forced to make an emergency landing after an engine blowout on Thursday morning.
'Everyone was crying,' JetBlue Flight 1416 passenger Dean Delbaugh told local KCAL-TV following the terrifying ordeal. 'I thought this was it.'
The plane had 142 passengers and five crew members aboard when one of its engines exploded some 25 minutes after takeoff from Long Beach airport in Southern California.
Flyers said they heard a pop, followed by a chilling vibration.
'Smoke came billowing out of the air vents and filled up the cabin in about 10 to 15 seconds,' said Delbaugh, who lives in Dana Point and was headed to Austin with his wife to visit her parents.
'The fumes were ridiculous. I can still kind of taste them in my mouth.'
One of the passengers aboard was actor Jackson Rathbone, who appeared in the 'Twilight' series.
Rathbone, who was with his wife and young son, tweeted through the ordeal and described how 'brave' flight attendants handed out oxygen masks after the devices didn't drop down from the ceiling.
'It was rough, the plane was rocking,' Rathbone tweeted. 'I recited the Lord's Prayer as I held my son and my wife in my arms.'
Soon, Rathbone said, the pilot announced that the plane had lost its right engine and was headed back to Long Beach Airport.
'We were told to brace as we careened sharply back towards land,' he wrote.
Another flyer, Jarrod West, recalled hearing the flight attendants shouting for everyone to prepare for a hard landing as the rumbling jet approached the runway.
'The flight attendants were yelling 'brace, brace' and they kept repeating it and repeating it on the top of their lungs,' West told KCAL-TV.
Despite the emergency, the jet made a gentle landing.
'We landed safely. It wasn't even all that rough, honestly,' Rathbone tweeted. 'I just couldn't stop kissing my family and thanking my God.'
Soon after, inflatable slides were deployed and all of the passengers and crew were able to exit the plane safely.
Four people were injured in the ordeal, including one who complained of shortness of breath and was taken to a local hospital.
The other three were treated at the scene, the station said.
Passengers who wished to continue on to Austin were later put on another flight.
Rathbone was among those who opted to take the later flight.
'When you fall off a horse, You get back up,' he tweeted, along with a photo of another JetBlue plane on the runway. 'Here we go again @jetblue - trusting you.'
He later tweeted a photo of six empty wine and champagne bottles.
'This is how we celebrate a near death experience at the Rathbone house,' he wrote.
Long Beach airport was shut down during the ordeal but reopened at around 11:30 a.m.
With News Wire Service
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