After their plane crashed and smoke billowed toward the passengers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his pilot couldn't force an emergency door open, Earnhardt told federal investigators, according to newly released federal documents.
Soon they saw flames shooting from the bathroom.
The documents, released by the National Transportation Safety Board on its public database, describe what happened next aboard the Cessna 680 business jet after it crashed Aug. 15 at Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee.
Holding his toddler daughter, Isla Rose, Earnhardt asked co-pilot Jeff Melton to try the main cabin door.
It, too, was stuck. But with a second try, Melton kicked the door open wide enough to slip through. The opening was the size of a conventional oven, Earnhardt said.
Earnhardt handed his daughter out to Melton, then squeezed out of the plane moments before fire spread through the cabin.
Only three people in the plane were hurt, however, and with only minor injuries at that, according to the NTSB.
Earnhardt Jr. was among those treated for minor non-life-threatening injuries at a nearby hospital, the Observer reported at the time.
In an apparent reference to Earnhardt Jr., Campbell said she stayed by his side until paramedics arrived.
"He tried to get up and could not and was asking if his wife and child were out and OK," Campbell said in a handwritten statement to the NTSB. Campbell had spent 25 years in the Air Force and the past 21 years as a flight attendant.
"I assured him I checked on his wife and his child and both were OK," Campbell wrote.
