Maryann Bruce is either jinxed – or the luckiest woman in the world!
She was on the U.S. Airways flight that crashed into New York’s Hudson River recently, but she wasn’t worried because she’s like the proverbial cat with nine lives – and the plane crash was only her seventh brush with death.
"It never occurred to me that I wasn’t going to get off that plane. I just thought, ‘OK, this is number seven. Here we go again,’" she told The ENQUIRER.
The 48-year-old mother of two has survived a tsunami, an earthquake, an avalanche and a plane ride through a hurricane. She was working in New York’s Twin Towers in 1993 during the first terrorist attack on the buildings, a car bombing. And she was on a plane on 9/11 that flew by the doomed towers.
"Some of my relatives think I’m jinxed. I prefer to think I’m a good luck charm," said Maryann, a business executive from Cornelius, N.C.
"I’m the woman with nine lives, but I guess I’d better start being careful because I’ve only got two left!"
Maryann was flying home to be with her husband and their teenage children when her plane ended up in the Hudson after hitting a flock of geese.
At first, after hitting the birds, "we were flying smoothly," she said. "There was a pilot sitting behind me and I said, ‘We’re going to turn around and land at LaGuardia, right?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’"
Instead, the plane’s hero pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, landed in the Hudson. All 155 people aboard survived, and Maryann suffered only a small bruise above her left eye.
Her first brush with death was in the mid-’80s when a tsunami hit the island of Hawaii while she and her husband were vacationing there. They were evacuated to high ground and escaped unscathed.
The couple had another close call when an avalanche came crashing down while they were driving on a mountain road during a Colorado ski trip.
She was in New York’s Twin Towers in 1993 when a terrorist bomb exploded.
"I had to walk down 34 flights of stairs in the dark," she recalled.
In 1995, she was riding in a cab in Los Angeles when an earthquake struck, and on 9/11 she was headed for Boston when her plane flew past the burning Twin Towers after the terrorist strike.
"I could see smoke coming out of them from my plane seat," she said.
Despite her close calls, Maryann boarded a plane to fly home on the day after her plane landed in the Hudson.
"I must admit, I was a little bit nervous when we took off," she confessed.
"But then I figured: ‘I’m going to be OK. I haven’t used up my nine lives yet!’"
