It was a nightmare thousands of feet in the air.
“There was no warning,” says Kristina Waters of when her Hawaiian Airlines flighthit violent turbulenceless than an hour away from the island in December.
“All of a sudden, it just hit,” she exclusively tells PEOPLE. “The first hit knocked me right out of my seat, and I hit my head on the overhead bin and cracked it open with my head.”
The flight, which left Phoenix, Arizona, just hours earlier, was carrying 278 passengers, including Waters and her partner, Kayla Hashimoto.
According tomultiplenews reports, 36 passengers were injured when the plane encountered an unstable air pocket. Eleven of the passengers were seriously hurt, perHawaii News Now.
“I mean, it was one of those shock situations,” says Kristina, 27, who was returning to her seat after using the restroom when the turbulence hit. “When it first happened, obviously, no one had any idea what was happening. It’s weird how your instincts kick in in moments like that.”
Kristina says she quickly put her hands over her neck after she was sent into the overhead bin, and a split moment later, she was on top of Kayla.
“Stuff was flying around,” Kayla, also 27, remembers. “People were screaming, someone literally called out for God.”
“Overhead bins opened, and stuff was falling out,” Kristina adds of the commotion in the plane. “Oxygen masks fell in front of some people who had hit their heads on the right part of the oxygen bin. It surely felt like a near-death experience at the moment.”
Hawaiian Airlines Chief Operating Officer Jon Snook later told theAssociated Pressthat the airline had not experienced a similar event in its recent history, and pilots had no warning that the patch of air was “in any way dangerous.” The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, he said.
Once the plane touched down, Kristina was treated for a head injury, which she believes was a concussion, at a hospital in Honolulu.
Kayla did her best to be a caretaker to Kristina after the rocky start of their trip. Still, she was determined to make their stay in Hawaii one to remember for a positive reason.
Kayla was glad the plan worked. In addition to all that had happened on the plane, a storm actually threatened to derail the proposal. (She also had help from event planning companyThe Gay Agenda Co.and photographer Taylor Walston.)
But after Kayla got down on one knee, Kristina had a surprise of her own.
“I proposed at the top, and I thought that was going to be it, right?” Kayla recalls. “We had talked before about Kristina proposing to me again down the road sometime, and then next thing I know, she’s getting down on her knee too, and proposing back.”
The couple returned to their home in Los Angeles in early January and are planning to marry in late 2024.
Yet, the two say it will be a long time before they can be genuinely comfortable flying again.
“There’s definitely a deep-seated trauma there now, especially of just having that experience,” Kristina says. “Now, looking back, obviously, we know we were never going to die in that situation, but at the moment, we didn’t know that.”
source: people.com
