Though Jorgensen had a good view outside the plane, he couldn't see the flames shooting from the two engines, but the smell of smoke quickly permeated the cabin. Jorgensen said he knew something bad was going to happen.

As the plane neared the surface of the river, an unsettling chant came from the three stewardesses, two of whom were seated in the rear and one in the front of the plane. "They were saying, 'brace, brace, brace. Heads down, stay down. They said it over and over and over. They must have said it 100 times. They said it in unison," he said. "That just scared the bejesus out of me. I was paralyzed with fear."

"My life didn't flash before my eyes. But I thought a lot about my children. I have two daughters, five and three. I thought about my wife. I thought about the complexity of our lives and all the things I deal with that they were now going to have to deal with," he said.

As soon as the plane had settled in the water, flight attendant Donna Dent jumped to open the emergency latch on the front, main cabin door. The latch was supposed to automatically deploy an inflated rubber chute that lead to a lifeboat. It failed. Dent struggled to find a backup chord to pull. Jorgensen said he asked if he could help. Before either could find the chord, the man who Jorgensen had been sitting next to pushed past Dent and jumped into the water.

Jorgensen waited and Dent found the chord. He slid down the chute into the life raft and sat there as other passengers climbed aboard. The group stayed in the raft for about 10 minutes, "just long enough for me to call my wife and tell her I'd been in a plane crash and scare the fool out of her."