Shazada Dawood once survived plane crash-like incident, says his wife

The five-member crew on the missing submersible Titan was declared dead late Thursday as the OceanGate Expedition-owned vessel lost contact with its mothership Sunday after descending into the ocean to take a closer look at the famous Titanic shipwreck sitting at the seabed.

According to the US Coast Guard, the debris found near the Titanic shipwreck site was consistent with the “catastrophic implosion” of the submersible.

As the news spread through the world, the story of a Pakistani tycoon Shazada Dawood — who was among the crew members including his 19-year-old son —has gained considerable traction on the internet.

According to his wife Christine Dawood’s blog post, she wrote on Next Step Now, Dawood had survived a terrifying deep plunge on a plane in an incident that took place in 2019.

Christine wrote: “I should have known when they cancelled our flight and put us on the next one. We should have taken the sign, gone back home and had a long and generous breakfast.”

“But we didn’t, and this flight became one of the most memorable ones of my life,” she said without identifying the journey.

She described the terrifying account of the plane taking a “deep plunge” that had passengers letting out “one simultaneous cry, which turned to a whimper and then silence”.

“I clutched my armrests as if that would make a difference. I needed something to hold on to, something stable in a shaky metal tube thousands of feet above the ground,” Christine added.

They encountered multiple violent plunges during the flight that left her feeling “like a grain in a big bag of sand”.

She also underlined that her husband Shahzada Dawood, a seasoned traveller and adventurer, was also scared.

“I’ve read many times that people start to pray in such situations or that their life flashes by like a movie. My husband told me later that he was thinking of all the opportunities he’d missed and how much he still wanted to teach our children,” she wrote.

“As the plane turned, my side lifted forcing me to look down to my left. My husband faced me, our eyes locked and our hands interlinked. No words were needed. He was as scared as I was and yet we were together. ‘Until death do…’ No, don’t go there!”

Though the plane landed on the ground safe and sound the experience was something that she said she “couldn’t forget for a long time.”