Jeff and Kathleen Smith’s two sons were playing in the snow Sunday without a care in the world.
But things could have ended differently for the Smith family had fate not intervened before their flight to Canada last week.
“One of Paddon’s homework assignments was to complete a journal,” Jeff Smith said Sunday. “He drew a picture of a plane … and said ‘my plane crashed today. I wasn’t on it.’ ”
The Sewall’s Point couple and their sons Paddon, 7, and Tanner, 4, were supposed to be on Thursday’s doomed flight from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo, N.Y., but a series of events prevented the family from boarding the ill-fated plane.
The couple still have the family’s four boarding passes to Continental Flight 3407.
“It wasn’t something we did do, but rather, something that we didn’t do,” said Jeff Smith from his cottage in Canada’s Port Elgin, where the family was headed.
Smith, who flies frequently as a referee with the American Hockey League, said the family tried to get on the flight twice from Palm Beach International Airport on Thursday.
“Two things happened, in hindsight, that was fortunate for us,” Smith said. “All the flights were backed up and the flight we were supposed to be on wound up being delayed, so we wouldn’t be able to make our connection flight into Buffalo on time.”
But it might have been the kindness of a Continental gate agent who noticed the couple’s two young boys that saved their lives.
“One of the gate agents said the route you’re taking was going to be a bumpy flight for the kids … so she rerouted us a different way,” Smith said. “At every turn, something prevented us from getting on that flight.”
The couple’s initial flight into Newark was scheduled to leave at 2:24 p.m. but the family didn’t leave PBIA until after dinner.
“It really got to me this morning, when the manifest came out with the names of the 49 people,” Smith said, adding his heart and thoughts were with the flight’s victims and their families. “That’s the first time it really hit me. It’s a surreal feeling.”
As a referee, Smith usually flies solo on most trips, but the couple planned a mini-vacation centered around skiing and tobogganing because of the near-perfect snow conditions at their cabin.
“I fly hundreds of times a year,” he said. “If my kids weren’t with me, I would have been flying … turbulence doesn’t bother me.”
The family has informed Continental Airlines that they were not on the flight.
Continental spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said the airline was unaware of the events surrounding the Smith family.
Published reports Sunday said 15 bodies have been recovered from the wreckage. The flight, with 49 passengers, crashed into a Clarence, N.Y. home late Thursday killing the homeowner, but sparing his wife and daughter. Investigators are reviewing whether ice contributed to the crash.
In a phone interview from the family’s Canadian cottage Sunday, Kathleen Smith said instead of taking a flight from Palm Beach into Newark and then taking Continental Flight 3407 into Buffalo, a Continental gate agent booked them on a US Airways flight into Charlotte, N.C. and another flight straight into Buffalo.
“I don’t know how to interpret this yet and it’s very difficult to put into words because I am still trying to figure this all out myself,” she said, adding she would like to meet and thank the Continental gate agent who changed their flight. “There are 49 other families out there that are having a very different experience and different emotions.”
She briefly described watching her sons play in the snow before explaining the scene after departing the US Airways flight in Buffalo.
“When we got there and we were walking through the airport in Buffalo, it was lined with TSA agents, policemen, firemen, the news crews … so you knew almost instantly that something unusual was happening,” she said. “When we got to our rental car, that’s when we realized what was happening, after listening to the radio on the courtesy shuttle. When we got there, they told us they didn’t have our car because we were supposed to be on flight 3407. At that point, I think we understood the impact and started calling family.”
One of the first people she called was her mother, Joan Murphy, a 29-year teacher at Jensen Beach Elementary.
“I truly feel like they were being protected, it was not their time yet,” Murphy said Sunday. “I consider this a huge blessing, a huge sign of protection from whomever, God, the angels, her father. Someone was watching over them.”
Murphy, who lost her husband several years ago, said she constantly prays for her two daughters and their families.
“It’s truly a miracle, I am still stunned,” said Murphy, who has been comforted by friends, neighbors, school co-workers and administrators. “I went out to dinner Friday night and just stared into space.
“But what I wanted to do was stand up in the dining room and say, ‘Hey folks, my kids are alive, they should have died on that airplane.’ I wanted to tell everyone what an unbelievable incident this was.”

– Nadia Vanderhoof

Tags: Buffalo, commuter, Continental, missed flight

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under Martin County, Stuart, Weird News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.