Janet Street-Porter voiced her empathy for Elton John on Wednesday’s Loose Women after his private jet had to make an emergency landing due to a failure at 10,000ft.
The 74-year-old’s plane twice aborted landing after winds reached 80mph, but made an emergency landing at Farnborough Airport, where fire crews attended the scene.
Janet, 75, said she had previously flown on the I’m Still Standing hitmaker’s jet and said she could relate to the plane horror after her own near-death experience mid-flight.
Janet told fellow panellists Jane Moore, Katie Piper and Linda Robson that she had been with her first husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter, who was working on a photo shoot.
She explained that the pair had gone for dinner at Bing Crosby’s house in Baja California, in Mexico on a borrowed small propeller plane, as the crooner’s home could not be accessed by road.
She said on the return leg of the trip, their journey turned hellish saying: “Iit was a brand new plane and the landing gear wouldn’t engage - that’s the wheels so that you can glide in with the wheels coming down.
“So we had to fly around for two hours using up the fuel in the wings until they got the accident gear and the fire engines on the runway.”
She added: “It seemed to take forever and ever and ever. During that time, I wrote my will by opening up a film carton and writing it on the inside. I had to lie in the tail of the plane to hold it down.”
Janet's fellow Loose Women ladies were rapt during the tale and asked if she had been scared by the experience.
She replied: “I went through being scared and came out the other side. I went through thinking ‘I’m going to die’ to ‘If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen’.”
She concluded: “Then we banged onto the runway and the plane was left impaled in the runway and we had to jump out.”
When Elton John’s private jet was forced to make an emergency landing earlier this week, ambulances and police were similarly alerted to the trouble the flight had come into en route to New York.
The aircraft then suffered hydraulic failure around an hour into the flight, which meant that the plane had to U-turn while approaching the coast of southern Ireland.
A witness told The Sun: “The jet was being buffeted and couldn’t land. It was horrible to see.”
A plumber, who was working when he saw the plane, said: “The terrible weather and epic gusts made it almost impossible to land. Two attempts to touch down failed.
“The plane was being buffeted and couldn’t make it. The aircraft’s nose was far too vertical. The plane was descending and was halfway along the runway when it gave up trying to hit the tarmac. It soared back in the air.”
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV.
