La Ronge Teen Talks About Plane Scare

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 at 13:32

A teenager from La Ronge went through some tense moments aboard a passenger jet early Monday morning.

Josh Cardinal was one of 65 people on board an Air Canada Jazz flight heading to Winnipeg from Ottawa that was forced to turn around because of smoke in the cabin.

The 17-year-old was just returning home from a national Aboriginal hockey camp in the nation’s capital.

Cardinal says he was sleeping at the time things started going wrong, but woke from his slumber when an air mask fell from the ceiling.

He says everybody was doing a pretty good job of keeping their cool, until a flight attendant started screaming into the intercom as passengers were using the emergency exits.

One of the other passengers on the aircraft broke her arm and hurt her ankle when another passenger fell on her in the mad dash out of the plane.

Cardinal admits initially thinking this was another case of terrorism — but the airline and the Ottawa police say the smoke was caused by a technical problem, not foul play.

The Transportation Safety Board is investigating.