A woman aboard an Air Canada Jazz flight from Calgary to Grande Prairie was rushed to hospital after one of the plane's propeller's reportedly snapped off and smashed into the passenger cabin.
Shockingly, Christina Kurylo suffered only minor injuries from the freak accident.
“I’m really lucky. It could have been a million times worse,” she told Global News. “I could have died, you know, you never know what could have happened.”
Kurylo told the news outlet she was seated in the seventh row of the plane -- Q400 turboprop carrying 71 passengers -- when the propeller smashed into the window, missing her face by inches.
“All of a sudden I got hit in the head,” she said. “It was pretty confusing for me. It’s bits and pieces for me after that.”
“The propeller, obviously that didn’t hit her, but the whole inside wall of the plane blew out so she had fibreglass and everything all embedded in her skin,” added her colleague Melissa Menard, also on the plane.
A photograph, taken in the aftermath, made headlines around the world.
The plane had been forced to land at Edmonton International Airport on Thursday almost immediately after taking off from Calgary.
"There was a loud explosion and then we took off and it was like bump, bump, bump," passenger Ron Prochner told The Canadian Press.
As the plane touched down, its landing gear reportedly collapsed.
"There were sparks. I remember smoke. I remember the horrible smell like gasoline and oil burning," Prochner recounted to CP. "A lot of people were really terrified. I know the young lady sitting beside me was scared. I wasn't scared until I looked at her. It was very frightening."
One of the plane's propellers snapped off the skidding plane and hurtled through the cabin wall.
"We didn't have any indication that anything was going to happen until the second we touched down and that's when it all just broke loose," passenger Lee Swaile told CBC News. "There was a big crash, and it felt like the weight from the plane, the tires all went out.
"You could feel that we were dragging on the ground. You could smell the hot asphalt and the hot metal just ripping through the ground. It almost felt like the plane was going to just turn over we were going so fast."
Four people were sent to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
“At this point, there is no reason to question the safety of the Q400 aircraft, Manon Stuart, a spokesperson for Jazz Aviation, told the Globe and Mail. "The cause of this incident is still unknown."
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