Pete Koukov, one of the passengers who survived the Delta Connection Flight 4819 at the Toronto International Airport last month, had a fascinating reason for instinctively filming the most horrifying moment of his life.
On Feb. 17, a Delta plane flying from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport to the Toronto International Airport crashed after landing and flipped upside down. Remarkably, all 76 passengers and four crew members survived the crash.
After the crash, 21 people were hospitalized, but all were released within days. Delta Air Lines then offered $30,000 in compensation to each of the passengers.
Koukov, a skier from Boulder, Colorado, took his camera out to film the near-death disaster as he was being evacuated from the plane. His video of the chilling Toronto International Airport incident quickly went viral.
(WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS LANGUAGE THAT IS NSFW):
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During an interview with CNN Sports, Koukov explained that he decided to capture the moment on film because of his instincts. Koukov cited his experience filming stressful moments as a skier:
“I was almost the best person to be taking a video in that situation. Because we film each other all the time, you get really good at it when your hands are cold, you get pretty good at pulling (the camera) out quick. Although I was in a very stressful situation, it wasn’t anything that I knew I wasn’t able to do, and I knew this was an insane event in my life and I made sure there was a recording of it.”
“There were moments of ‘Are we going to blow up? Is there going to be a fire?’ Until I was off the plane, that’s when it was like ‘OK, I can breath.”
Koukov said he caught the plane to Toronto International Airport for a shoot with Browser Ski Magazine. But a back injury has sidelined Koukov from the mountains for the time being, but he told CNN Sports that the crash likely won’t alter his lifestyle in recreational spors.
Delta Crash At Toronto International Airport Was Latest Aircraft Scare
A U.S. Army Black Hawk collided with an American Airlines plane in midair, killing all 67 people on the two aircraft. On Jan. 31, seven people were killed and 24 injured when a Med Jets Flight crashed in Philadelphia’s Castor Gardens neighborhood.
