Last month, Camila Alves revealed that she was on the Lufthansa flight that suddenly dropped 4,000 feet in what’s been described as a terrifying Final Destination-like situation. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Virginia after the turbulence caused the passengers to experience “zero gravity” conditions during the jarring drop.
What wasn’t known at the time is whether Alves’ husband, Matthew McConaughey was aboard the flight. Conflicting reports made it seem like the Texas actor was elsewhere, but he’s now confirmed that he was on board and experienced the ordeal.
While appearing on Kelly Ripa’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast, McConaughey revealed that the situation happened so quickly that the pilot didn’t even have a chance to warn passengers.
Via Page Six:
“My tray table is what held me down,” the actor, 53, recalled. “I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened.” The Oscar winner noted that he “immediately reached over” to make sure his wife, Camila Alves, had her seatbelt on.
The “hell of a scare” left McConaughey feeling like he had “no way to get control of this situation the moment.”
After describing the other passengers’ reaction, which ranged from eerie silence to shocked laughter, McConaughey had his nerves calmed by a pilot friend who was flying with the couple.
“The steel, it buckled… and I was like, ‘Can the plane hold that?'” McConaughey told Ripa. “And he was like, ‘These things are so tested, that yes, don’t worry, the plane structurally can hold that.'”
More importantly, McConaughey’s friend assured him that he — the pilot friend, not McConaughey, although let’s not rule that out either — could fly the plane if something was wrong with the original pilot. “He was like, ‘No problem.’ And I was like, ‘Great, love to hear that.'”
(Via Page Six)
