Generally speaking, traveling by plane is considered very safe. However, there are still incidents in the public's mind when things went terribly, tragically wrong. For example, there was the collision between an American Airlines flight and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., in January 2025. That disastrous crash resulted in the loss of 67 people. Furthermore, many famous singers have perished in plane crashes over the years. Among them are Ricky Nelson, Ritchie Valens, Patsy Cline, Jim Croce, Otis Redding, and others. Therefore, when country music singer Cody Johnson was aboard a plane years ago that suddenly began to descend way too fast, he understandably quaked in fear.
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Johnson Spoke About Those Scary Moments in the Sky Recently
The "Human" singer from Sebastopol, Texas, was recently a guest on the Rodeo Time podcast hosted by Dale Brisby. Johnson recalled what it felt like on that private jet when it began to dangerously nosedive toward the ground.
He shared, "It was very ironic because we were going over the crash site where Lynyrd Skynyrd went down. The alarms go off and the plane just starts plummeting. And you want confidence out of a lot of people, like your surgeons, you know, the guy pulling your bull rope. But I think your pilot [is another one]. When you can see true, unadulterated fear in a man's eyes and he's the one controlling the aircraft, [it's terrifying]."
Additionally, Cody Johnson remembered this as well. "So I get up, and we're kind of plummeting through the air. You can feel like the drinks are starting to kind of move around. We were actually playing cards, and I've never said this on a plane ever again. I said, 'Well, this don't [expletive],' [and the alarms went off]."
He Immediately Prepared for the Worst
As Johnson told Dale Brisby, he went into the cockpit to find out what was happening. The pilots confirmed his most horrifying thoughts - the plane was headed straight down. "I ran up to the pilots, and I said, 'What the heck is going on?' and he was white as a sheep. He looked at me and said, 'You need to sit down and make yourself ready. We're going down.' And I said, 'Where are we putting it down?' He said, 'We're not putting it down, we're going down.'" It sounds like a scene from a movie, but this nightmare was all too real. Panels were even being dislodged from the walls.
Johnson's mind and heart were probably both racing. He continued somberly, "I turned around and Noe and Jackson and Brandi [Johnson's wife] are looking at me, like eyes wide open... I went and sat by Brandi and we started looking through our phones and looking at pictures of our kids. [We were like], 'Look at what we did.'"
The Plane Finally Stopped Plunging Down
Miraculously, the aircraft stopped dropping at an altitude of 10,000 feet. Turns out that the incident was allegedly due to pilot error. Cody Johnson firmly believes that what saved them was faith and prayer. "This is the power of prayer right here. They did diagnostics on that plane; there was nothing wrong with the plane. I truly, to this day, believe she prayed that plane into the air."
