Michael Thexton

I said, we've got to go.

And so I pushed him out.

He made his way to the far side, the starboard wing.

I saw that the port wing exit was also open.

And I got out.

Apparently, I'm about the only person who got out that way.

I don't know what, you know, somebody must have opened the door because I didn't.

But there was no chute.

There's no way in God's earth I'm getting back on that plane.

And so I thought I'll slide off the back of the wing.

I'll dangle from my fingertips and it can't be very far from that to the ground.

Surely, you know, it was dark and there's nothing to hang onto on the back of a jumbo jet wing.

You know, I can, I can tell you that you probably will never find that out from experience.

And so I went off the back of that wing at some speed and there's a moment in the air where you're thinking, well, this is taking a little longer than I was expecting.

Um, you know, cause it's a long way down.

It's like jumping off the roof of a house, not, not, not out of the upstairs windows.

It's a long way to the ground, but,

Again, luck.

Here am I, 35 pounds underweight, as fit as I'd ever been in my life, wearing mountaineering boots.

There are people who had taken their shoes off on the plane to be comfortable during the day, didn't put them back on again at the end, and they were jumping off the wings in bare feet.