Missing 'Titan' Sub Passenger Shahzada Dawood Previously Survived 'Deep Plunge' on Plane with Wife
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“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," his wife wrote in 2019
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Years before he boarded the Titan submersible, Shahzada Dawood survived a terrifying ordeal on a plane, according to his wife.
In a 2019 blog post that has resurfaced as rescue crews race to locate the missing OceanGate sub, the British Pakistani businessman’s wife, Christine Dawood, detailed a life-changing flight in which their “plunged” multiple times while flying through a storm.
“I've read many times that people start to pray in such situations or that their life flashes by like a movie,” she wrote in a post on her coaching business, Next Step Now, sharing that the event made her switch careers. The experience got her husband thinking about his life as well, she wrote.
“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.
The billionaire father and the 19-year-old son he shares with Christine, Suleman, are among the five people on board the missing submarine that disappeared on Sunday while heading to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
While it is unclear when their flight occurred, Christine wrote that it was initially canceled — which she took for a bad omen.
“The start was uneventful and so was most of the cruising but just as the seatbelt signs came on to alert us to our imminent landing approach, the plane took a deep plunge,” the mother of two wrote. “I later read that a plane doesn't drop more than three to five metres during turbulence, but my stomach in that moment would beg to differ. The whole cabin let out one simultaneous cry, which turned to a whimper and then silence.”
As the plane began to plunge and “shook left to right,” Christine wrote that she gripped her husband’s hand and “there was a moment of stillness when we were out of the clouds but the relief I longed for didn't come.”
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“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!” she wrote.
Finally, the pilot was able to land the plane safely.
“I felt a squeeze of my hand and heard somebody talking to me, but I was frozen still," she wrote. “It's then that I realised that my life had changed and would never be the same again."
Related: Who Is on the Missing 'Titanic'-Bound Sub? All About the Passengers
The search for the missing sub began shortly after the vessel “lost all communication” with Canadian expedition vessel Polar Prince “approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes” into its dive, according to United States Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick.
The sub began its journey with an estimated 96 hours of oxygen, Frederick said at a press conference in Boston on Tuesday. Estimates suggest that the Titan ran out of breathable air by Thursday morning.
Alamy Stock Photo
The Oceangate submersible TitanOn Thursday afternoon, the United States Coast Guard announced that a “debris field” had been discovered during an underwater search for the missing submersible that was traveling to the site of the Titanic wreckage.
At a press conference later in the afternoon officials will discuss what was found by Horizon Arctic during its search of the sea floor near the Titanic.
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