Matthew McConaughey Cheats Death: "Zero Gravity" Flight Drops 4000 ft in Frightening Mishap
Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila Alves, were on the ill-fated Lufthansa flight that suddenly dropped 4,000 feet last month. Recalling the hair-raising near-death experience, the Interstellar actor detailed the story of "suspended disbelief" on the Sirius XM podcast Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa.
Describing the "zero gravity" situation to the podcast host Kelly Ripa in a preview of Wednesday’s episode, he said, "Your red wine and the glass and the plates that your food was on are all suspended, floating, still just in the air. And to look at it for that long, which wasn't that long — one, two, three, four — and then everything just comes crashing down. It was a hell of a scare. A 100% feeling of knowing you have no way to get control of this situation at the moment." The 53-year-old revealed another shocking update, according to Fox News: his tray table held him in his seat since he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when the plane abruptly dropped.
"There was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened. I just immediately reached over, and made sure Camila had her seatbelt on," he added. He said that they held hands in anticipation of another drop coming. "Another one did come. It was odd." He also spoke about how unnerving it is to hear other people's reactions to the drop. "You hear people's reactions. Some people were ghost silent. Some people had big bursts of laughter. And it was not like, 'Oh, this is fun.' It was like, 'I'm in shock'. And then, you know how it is on a plane — you see the flight attendant not looking extremely confident, and you’re like, 'Uh oh'."
Camila Alves had posted a video of food strewn about the cabin last month from their hell-raising experience on the Lufthansa flight where she detailed what it was like to sit on that flight. "The plane was a CHAOS And the turbulence keep on coming," she explained in the caption.
The Frankfurt-bound flight, which was rerouted to Washington, D.C., was the "hairiest" one he’s experienced "by far" McConaughey said. The couple eventually made it safely to Vietnam, which was their final destination, without any injuries. Coincidentally, McConaughey said he had a friend who was a pilot sitting next to him at the time. "As a person who's not a pilot, my mind goes to the actual engineering of the plane," he added. "The steel, it buckled. And you go, 'How can something withstand that?'"
"I happened to have a friend of mine sitting next to me who was a pilot," he continued. "And he was calm as could be. I was like, 'Can the plane hold that?' And he was like, 'These things are so tested, that yes, don't worry, the plane structurally can hold that.' That was a big relief."
The airline briefly issued an official statement calling the turbulence "brief but severe." "Lufthansa Flight 469 diverted to Dulles International Airport and landed without incident around 9:10 p.m. local time after the crew reported encountering severe turbulence at 37,000 feet altitude over Tennessee," the FAA said in a statement.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority briefed after the plane landed at Dulles that "authority personnel responded to the flight and transported seven people to local hospitals." The FAA added that it will be launching an investigation into what happened on board the Airbus A330 that was flying from Austin to Germany. "Lufthansa regrets the inconvenience caused to passengers," the airline said in part. "The safety and well-being of passengers and crew members is Lufthansa's top priority at all times."
