Two weeks ago, you may have heard about Jetstar flight making an emergency landing in Guam after a fire in the cockpit. Gold Coast shaper Woody Jack was on that flight with his partner Roxanne and their baby son, Miles, and, after getting over the fact they’d just cheated death, he realised how lucky he was to be one of the only people on the flight who had surfboards with him...

Woody, Roxanne and Miles. Photo: Woody

Flight JQ 20 was departing from Osaka airport in Japan at 11pm. Woody and his family boarded through gate 13 (was that a sign?) Everything was going to plan until three hours into the flight. “There was a burning smell, like a hundred toasters crackling away up near the cockpit,” said Roxanne. “I was really worried and kept asking Woody, ‘What is that? What is that’?” It was only a matter of minutes before the pilot interrupted to let everyone know we were experiencing technical difficulties.

Here’s an example of what you could win. Photo: Woody

“As soon as they said there was a technical problem we started descending”, Woody said. “All the lights started flashing, then suddenly they just went out and the cabin was dark… and we were going down. It wasn’t a comforting feeling”, admitted Woody. The most concerning were the actions of a male hostie, or lack of. “He was clearly shitting himself; looking down at the floor, looking sideways and out the window, between eerie moments of him just staring at us. He wasn’t talking to anyone,” Woody said with a bewildered tone in his voice.

You think Woody was lucky surviving the cabin fire, check out his missus, Roxanne. Photo: Ted Grambeau

The plane punched in low and fast to make an emergency landing, in the small American territory of Guam. “We sat on the tarmac for an hour… everyone started getting agitated and pissed off”, Woody said. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom; positives did come out of the unexpected stopover. Woody got to slay a few peaks and was so impressed with the variety of waves that he’ll be returning. “I got to suss a bunch of waves, and will definitely be going back to Guam”.

Photo: Ted Grambeau


Now that Woody’s safely back in the shaping bay, he wants to share his recent run of good luck, so he’s giving away a custom 'Woody Jack' high performance shorty or fish to whoever has the best aeroplane adventure tale. It doesn’t have to be death defying. It could be about how you accidently squeezed four boards into a double board bag and got them all the way to Liberia. Or how you flew from Perth to Sydney to board a flight to Tahiti before realising you’d forgotten your passport. Or how you intentionally tripped a hostie, because they wouldn’t give you one last Bintang en route to Bali. Send your tales to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with, ‘I own the mile high club’ as the subject and you could win.


Photo: Ted Grambeau

 

You’ll need to check out Woody’s handy work (www.woodyjack.com) to see if you’d prefer a fish or a shorty.

Good Luck.

Photo: Ted Grambeau