Matthew McConaughey.Photo: Tara Ziemba/WireImage
Matthew McConaugheyis reflecting on his experience aboard aLufthansa flight that endured severe turbulencelast month.
The Academy Award winner, 53, was traveling en route from Austin, Texas, to Frankfurt, Germany, with his wife,Camila Alves, when the flight had to make an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
Alves, 41, had previously shared herrecollection of the flight on Instagram, expressing that “the plane dropped almost 4000 feet.”
“My tray table is what held me down,” he shared with podcast hostKelly Ripa. “I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened,” he added, calling the experience a “hell of a scare.”
“Your red wine and the glass and the plates that your food was on are all suspended, floating, still just in the air. And to look at it for that long, which wasn’t that long — one, two, three, four [seconds] — and then everything just comes crashing down,” he continued.
TheDallas Buyers Clubactor revealed that he got comfort from his pilot friend sitting beside him during the terrifying ordeal.
Rick Kern/WireImage
“I happened to have a friend of mine sitting next to me who was a pilot. And he was calm as could be,” said McConaughey. “I was like, ‘Can the plane hold that?’ And he was like, ‘These things are so tested that yes, don’t worry, the plane structurally can hold that.’ That was a big relief.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.
The FAAshared with PEOPLEin a statement that Lufthansa Flight 469 was flying 37,000 feet above Tennessee when it experienced “severe turbulence” that hospitalized seven passengers. It was able to land at the Virginia airport “without incident” at 9:10 p.m., the agency said.
source: people.com
