Survivor, Hero Of Plane Crash Recounts Ordeal
He awoke to a hostile world of pitch blackness, covered in rising ice water that was already swirling past his nose.
Joe Stiley’s clearing brain flashed over a few compressed moments before the lights went out: He was in a plane, on a business trip from Washington, D.C., to Tampa, Fla. There was a shaky takeoff followed by a sickening veer to the left.
Then came the first impact, not so bad, followed by a moment of weightlessness and the worst bone-crushing jolt he’d ever felt. It knocked him cold.
Now he had the mystery solved. He was in seat 18C of a Boeing 737, busted up and sinking fast into the ice-encrusted Potomac River.
The GTE executive gulped one last precious mouthful of air and made a stubborn decision - to live.
“I knew what I was going to do. As soon as I woke up I was building a plan,” says Stiley, 56, of the Jan. 13, 1982, disaster that forever changed him.
For years the North Spokane resident, who founded the computer-based Information Mini-Mall, kept a fairly low profile about the final flight of Air Florida Palm 90. After all, 97 people died when the big jet fell. Stiley was one of only five survivors.
But with last month’s 15th anniversary, Stiley figured enough time and pain had passed.
Last Wednesday he appeared on NBC’s “Leeza” talk show. He taped a segment for another program that features dramatic live-action footage. Prior to that he took part in a Discovery Channel special on survival and did a guest spot on another syndicated talk show.
“This was the first time I actually had fun talking about it,” says Stiley, a gravel-voiced guy with a broad mustache and smiling eyes. He says he’s slightly mystified why there is still so much interest in a disaster a decade-and-a-half old.
That’s really no mystery.
Unlike the recent ValuJet crash in a remote Florida swamp, this horror couldn’t have been more public. Death struck in broad daylight at the nation’s capital before hundreds of shocked witnesses.
The stalled jetliner - doomed by heavy, ice-covered wings - slammed into the 14th Street Bridge killing five unsuspecting commuters. The tail section snapped off as the plane plunged into the river, taking another 92 crew members and passengers.
It took an agonizing half-hour for ill-equipped rescue teams to pull Stiley and the others from the frigid waters. A few minutes more exposure would have added their names to the dead. All of this grim human struggle was captured by TV crews and replayed countless times.
Stiley’s own heroic actions are as gripping as a survival yarn gets. With a broken face and mangled legs, he somehow managed to free himself and his secretary Nicki Felch.
“When you’re on the bottom of a river and it’s 30 feet to the top, it reduces the number of things you think about.”
Pulling her damaged feet out from under collapsed seats, he held her arm and somehow swam the inky water to the broken tail section. On the surface, Stiley helped rescue Pricilla Tirado. The woman lost her husband, Jose, and 2-month-old baby, Jason, in the crash.
Stiley says he did what he did not so much out of blind luck, but because of hours of training and single-minded determination.
A commercial pilot, Stiley had 12,000 flight hours at the time of the crash. Scarcely down the runway, the engine noise told him something was radically wrong.
As the jet began to shimmy in the air, he instructed Felch how to bend into the tuck position. That saved them. Many hapless passengers sat stiffly, bracing for the blow that snapped their necks.
Stiley still suffers from injuries that took years to heal. Every now and then, especially when the cold makes his back throb, he catches himself reliving those terrible moments when death all but whispered his name.
“I could have missed so much,” he says. “I like being a son to my parents. I like being a father to my kids. I’ve got five grandchildren. The sixth is on the way.”
Joe Stiley winks. “The value of life with a little pain,” he adds, “is a helluva lot better than the alternative.”
, DataTimes