{"id":784946,"date":"2026-05-09T19:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T19:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/784946\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T19:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T19:49:14","slug":"la-bound-family-reveals-gruesome-moment-plane-struck-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/784946\/","title":{"rendered":"LA-bound family reveals gruesome moment plane struck person"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Nebraska father and his two sons on a trip to Los Angeles for a Pok\u00e9mon Go tournament nearly met a harrowing end on Friday\u2019s cursed Frontier flight, which saw a man shredded in their plane\u2019s engine.<\/a><\/p>\n

56-year-old John Anthens thought he and his two sons, 30-year-old Jacob and 19-year-old Levi, were going to die in the seconds following the plane\u2019s engine sucking an unidentified pedestrian in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the engine blew up, I thought, \u2018oh sh*t, we\u2019re all going to die,\u201d John Anthens said.<\/p>\n

Anthens said he felt the nose of the plane pitch up before what sounded like a \u201cbomb\u201d rocked the cabin.<\/p>\n

Jacob said his father was looking out the window when it happened and witnessed a gruesome sight.<\/p>\n

Human legs twirling in the engine.<\/p>\n

Passengers evacuating a Frontier Airlines flight at night. madicartas\/TikTok<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad said when the engine fire went up, he was able to see the legs of a human spinning around in the engine\u2026which sounds like emotional trauma to me,\u201d Jacob said.<\/p>\n

John poses on the left with Jacob, right. Courtesy of John Anthens<\/p>\n

The plane managed to put the nose down and come to a stop. The father and two sons say they sat in their seats choking in thick black smoke from the fire, and flight attendants commanded people to stay in their seats. Courtesy of John Anthens<\/p>\n

The plane managed to put the nose down and come to a stop. The father and two sons say they sat in their seats choking in thick black smoke from the fire, and flight attendants commanded people to stay in their seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say the majority of people didn\u2019t know what was going on or what happened, but there was just a big explosion, and obviously, you hear a big explosion, people start screaming, kids are crying, and it was horrific,\u201d John said.<\/p>\n

The three made it off the plane okay, with John pausing to take photos of the bloody aftermath in the engine and his younger son, Levi, helping people slide off the plane.<\/p>\n

The three made it off the plane okay, with John pausing to take photos of the bloody aftermath in the engine and his younger son, Levi, helping people slide off the plane. Courtesy of John Athens<\/p>\n

None of them got much sleep that night, and they decided to cancel their first-ever trip to California over the trauma the flight inflicted. Frontier offered John a $500 flight credit he says won\u2019t be of much use because of the harrowing experience.<\/p>\n

It also ruined their father-son Pok\u00e9mon experience set to go<\/a> at the Pok\u00e9mon Regional Championships.<\/p>\n

Anthens said he was traveling to Los Angeles to play in a Pok\u00e9mon Go tournament with Jacob at the LA Convention Center.<\/p>\n

Anthens said he was traveling to Los Angeles to play in a Pok\u00e9mon Go tournament with Jacob at the LA Convention Center. Courtesy of John Athens<\/p>\n

Jacob is a highly-ranked player in Pok\u00e9mon Go, the infamous pocket-monster walking game, and hoped to advance far in the tournament. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I had a real chance to make some noise there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were going to go have some fun, and never got that opportunity,\u201d John added.<\/p>\n

The family is making the 8-hour drive back to Omaha, Nebraska, in a rental car \u2014 opting out of another flight.<\/p>\n

But one Pok\u00e9mon extravaganza short and heavy from the trauma of the bizarre plane experience, the family wants to be optimistic.<\/p>\n

On the way, the family is taking a detour.<\/p>\n

John said they\u2019re going whitewater rafting, hours after they could have died.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Need to] get our mind on something other than somebody blowing up in an engine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Nebraska father and his two sons on a trip to Los Angeles for a Pok\u00e9mon Go tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":784947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[52421,1582,276,57232,2961,224,5337,5248,1154],"class_list":{"0":"post-784946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-airplanes","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-frontier-airlines","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-metro","16":"tag-us-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116546356375291905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}