When Chesney Hawkes was recently on an Aegean Airlines Airbus A320 from Greece to Barcelona, the plane plunged 20,000 feet, the oxygen masks dropped and an emergency was declared. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the end. He did.

But this is 2023, so he and his wife left a voice memo for his kids. As he told the Scum: “We thought we were going down. Our ears hurt and babies were crying. The pilot came over the loudspeaker and said, ‘Emergency descent — brace’…The plane was rattling and banked so steeply we looked out and could see the sea. We thought we were going into the water. Krissy and I looked at each other and hugged… We left a voice message on the family WhatsApp group. We were both crying and told the kids how proud we were of them and how much we loved them.”

“There was no other information,” he continued. “The stewards were crying and everyone around us was hysterical. Then suddenly the plane stopped rattling and the descent slowed.”

The pilot managed to recover the flight and land safely. ”All the crew were great,” Chesney said, “even the stewardess who had a moment. And thankfully we managed to delete the WhatsApp message when we landed before any of them listened to it.”