Flight 1549’s charmed passenger

last updated 8 January 2015

Maryann Bruce may have been the only passenger aboard US Airways Flight 1549 who wasn’t terrified, says Christina Boyle in the New York Daily News. That’s because she had already escaped death six times before the jet ditched in the Hudson River last week. “I’m the woman with nine lives,” says the 48-year-old business executive from Cornelius, N.C. “I thought, No. 7, here we go again.” An inveterate traveler, Bruce was in Hawaii when a tsunami hit, and in California during an earthquake. She’s flown through a hurricane, and survived an avalanche while skiing in Colorado. She was in the World Trade Center when it was first attacked, by a terrorist truck bomb, in 1993, and witnessed the twin towers’ destruction on Sept. 11 while aboard a flight from Charlotte to Boston. Of Flight 1549, Bruce says, “It never dawned on me that I wasn’t getting off that plane.’’ Her relatives call her a jinx, but she interprets all her close calls differently. “I think I’m a good luck charm.’’ Nor will she let the latest disaster discourage her from resuming her travels. “I’m the type that just figures you’ve got to get back on the horse. You never think it’s going to happen again, you gotta live life, and I don’t want to live life being afraid.”