Four passengers miraculously survived an airplane crash in the Idaho wilderness. Even more incredible—it was all caught on tape. INSIDE EDITION speaks with one of the passengers about the terrifying ordeal.
It seemed a perfect end to an idyllic day in the Idaho wilderness as a party of four took off in their private plane. Their destination was a town in the mountains for dinner.
But within minutes, there was disaster and it was all caught-on-video from inside the cockpit.
The 65-year-old vintage Stinson plane was turned into a tangled mass of metal, but incredibly, all four on board survived.
INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd asked passenger Alec Arhets, "What was going through your mind during those moments as your plane failed to gain altitude?"
Arhets said, "You feel, 'I am not ready to die yet. What's my family going to do? How are they going to be taken care of?'"
From the start, experienced pilot Les Gropp, who flew in Vietnam, seemed to have trouble getting the single-engine plane off the ground. When he did, hot and heavy air stopped the aircraft from climbing high enough above the treetops. Then it crashed.
Arhets said, "I can vividly remember the debris, pieces of windshield, dirt, rocks, kind of flying in and the dust just in the cabin."
While the three passengers survived with just a few scrapes and bruises, the pilot was badly bloodied and suffered a painful broken jaw and cheekbone.
They were rescued by a helicopter within an hour.
Arhets is celebrating his escape and his daughter's high school graduation at Disneyworld.
Boyd asked, "Will you be getting back in a small aircraft like that again?"
Arhets said, "My wife told me that small planes are off my agenda for the near future."
Gropp, whose son was on board, is being credited with saving the group's lives by keeping control of the plane as it crashed.
