It's hard to even fathom what it's like to free fall in an airplane like that. The doom may feel inevitable, the fear takes over the entire body. All you want is for some sort of miracle. An expert tries to cobble together what those last moments are actually like.
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Recently, Fox News speaks with Dr. Alan Diehl. He formerly investigated crashes like the one with the Nelons for the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Air Force. Moreover, he specializes in aviation psychology, knowing the likely thought process while up in the air. Consequently, Diehl knows his stuff. Upon learning about the preliminary cause of the crash, the expert breaks down what those final moments were like for the 3 fallen Nelons.
Expert Breaks Down The Last Moments for The Nelons
The expert likens what happened with the Nelons to a similar historical tragedy that invokes the same sort of intense fear. "Dark terror. That's what you usually hear in my novel when I talk about [John F. Kennedy Jr.] falling from the sky," Diehl says. "I said it was all over, but the screaming, and that's based on, you know, he didn't have a voice recorder on his airplane, but I'm sure that he and his two passengers were just in terror as the plane was falling out of the sky, much like this one."
Additionally, Diehl does grant some sense of levity out of such a tragedy. It's entirely plausible that the Nelons were fortunate enough to not be conscious before the plane crashed. " The plane may have lost pressurization," the expert adds. "And in a way... if the breakup occurred early enough, and they lost pressurization, they may have actually been unconscious or semi-conscious at the last minute or so. And that would be merciful. They would say that was God's mercy."
Now, it's all on to the official investigators to diagnose the data and get a full feel for what exactly happened to the plane for it to crash.