Californian Tells How He Survived

TULARE, Calif. — A California man on the Delta jetliner that crashed on takeoff from Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport Wednesday arrived home bearing only a slight scratch from the accident and saying he was “very lucky” to be alive.

Danny Ellington, 40, of Tulare, wasn’t supposed to be on the ill-fated Delta flight, but he arrived at the airport early and Delta agreed to allow him to take the earlier flight home, he said as he arrived via American Airlines at Meadows Field in Bakersfield Wednesday night.

“They did me a favor. They put me on early,” he said.

Ellington was so blinded by camera lights as he stepped down from the plane that he had to call out for his wife and daughter whom he knew were waiting for him in the crowd.

After a tearful family reunion, Ellington then recounted how he escaped the smoke-filled plane through an emergency exit, near his seat over one of the plane’s wings. Just before the crash he heard a “sputtering like a car backfiring,” he said.

Ellington, who had been visiting his ill mother in the Dallas area, said he felt “very fortunate and very lucky” to have survived the disaster which claimed the lives of 13 other people. His only injury was a slight scratch on the forehead.