Former Eagle Scout Glad He Wore Parachute
by Winsip Custer
It was never reported to the media and a poll of Southwest Airlines employees making the trip to San Diego as members of the Go Southwest Airline! training event in May 2008 voted not to tell of the horrifying incident. Given Southwest's history of maintenance priorities, employees' fears that they might loose their jobs and the fact that no one was seriously injured, influenced their voting.
"The aluminum skin above seat 37b peeled back like a sardine can and Jerry Luxembitsch was sucked out like my bi-weekly paycheck in the money tube at a drive-in bank window. Sittin' there one second and pow-zip....gone," said Cindy Weed from her home in San Diego, California.
"The cut on my left shoulder took eight staples, but all in all I was better off than Senator John McCain after he broke both arms and a knee cap jettisoning from his A4 Skyhawk over Hanoi," said Luxembitsch who was anxious to tell about his Just In Case parachute which he will market through his own company called Just In Case for about $495.
"I made it for me," said Luxembitsch, a flight attendant for Southwest for eight years. "I kept hearing about the dangers of metal fatigue and that's when I made my first Just In Case parachute." The device looks like a thin seat cushion which you sit on and buckle around your waist and shoulders," he explained with the enthusiasm of Charles Lindberg selling the attributes of the Spirit of St. Louis.
"When the skin popped open and I went flying I said to myself 'you brilliant SOB, you're gonna make a fortune off this thing as soon a people start hearing about the problems of metal fatigue on the ageing U.S. commercial air fleet. I started putting together my business plan at about 20,000 feet," said Luxembitsch who also suffered frost bite on his nose, ears and fingertips, but whose business plan received funding from a venture capatal group of former Boeing Aircraft Company engineers in Seattle, Washington called Money-To-Spare, LLC.
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