“I can’t believe I am going to die in this plane”: John Travolta Recalls Near Death Experience While Piloting a Corporate Jet
John Travolta is one of the most celebrated and admired actors in the industry who rose to fame during the 1970s with his iconic characters in Grease, Welcome Back, Kotter, Saturday Night Fever, etc. He made a comeback in the 1990s with his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a character he’s remembered and admired for even today.
Travolta then went on to star in many successful movies becoming one of the prominent figures in the industry. John Travolta is a private pilot but recently recalled a heart-wrenching incident that he says could have ended his life.
John Travolta recalls near-death experience as a private pilot
Not many of the fans are aware that with having a successful career as an actor, John Travolta is also a licensed pilot and recently recalled a heart-wrenching incident when he was piloting with his entire family on board.
Ahead of the release of his upcoming movie The Shepherd, the actor at the London screening of the movie shared with BBC,
“The kismet of the project is, I actually experienced a total electrical failure not in a Vampire but a corporate jet, over Washington DC, prior to my discovering the book. So when I read the book, it resonated more because of this experience I’d personally had.”
Travolta continued to share,
“I knew what it felt like to absolutely think you’re going to die. Because I had two good jets engines but I had no instruments, no electric, nothing. And I thought it was over, just like this boy, portrayed so beautifully by Ben Radcliffe. He captured that despair when you’re going to die.”
The Grease actor went on to mention that moment when he thought it was over but he survived;
“I had my family on board and I said, ‘This is it, I can’t believe I’m going to die in this plane’. And then, as if by miracle, we descended to a lower altitude, I saw the Washington DC Monument and identified that Washington National Airport was right next to it and I made a landing just like his character Freddie. So I’m reading this book and saying I’ve lived this.”
During the interaction the actor did not specify when the incident took place but, John Travolta had acknowledged back in 1995 in a New Yorker interview that he had to make an emergency landing at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after he suffered engine failure while he was flying with his family in 1992.
John Travolta says The Shepherd was his dream project
Apart from living the gut-wrenching experience of emergency landing like the one mentioned in the 1975 novella by Frederick Forsyth, in which a young Royal Air Force pilot played by Ben Radcliffe requires help from another pilot played by John Travolta after his plane struggles with electrical failure, the actor said, he instantly fell in love with the book.
Travolta noted during his conversation with BBC, that he discovered the book with Vampire Jet on the front of it at a bookstore in Canada thinking that he needed to read it. He mentioned that it was his dream to turn the book into a movie one day so he purchased the rights but due to circumstances, he had to forget about the project until director Iain Softley came along who also fell in love with the book.
The actor joked at the screening that he had to wait thirty years to play the shepherd. The director also notes,
“One of the reasons I think it is so enduring is the genius of the story. It makes you question and examine what home means and what is important. And it goes beyond that. It’s about the kind of scared nature in a lot of religions of bringing people home and looking after the lost traveller.”
The movie is scheduled for a release on 1st December on Disney+.
