Less than 24 hours after American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington D.C., taking the lives of more than 60 people, Leighton Mixon boarded his own American Airlines flight from Jacksonville to Miami.
Mixon, who was coincidentally celebrating his 28th birthday on Thursday, Jan. 30, is also a flight attendant currently on medical leave.
“I don’t have a single fear about flying in the world, but all it takes is just one event, such as what happens in D.C. to absolutely rattle you,” Mixon exclusively tells PEOPLE. “I had the fear and anxiety going into the flight. You get in your head about it.”
He took to his seat with an unusual anticipation for how the flight crew would handle addressing the anxious passengers on board.
“I kind of was curious to hear what are they going to say, how are they going to act, how are they going to be? Not only is it your job to get there safely, but you also have to keep everyone else emotionally maintained,” Mixon suggests of the flight crew. “So something inside me just kind of knew, ‘I want to hear what this pilot has to say whenever he picks up his phone.’ So I was kind of listening for it. And the minute he started speaking, I just pulled out my phone.”
In Mixon’s TikTok video, the pilot is heard emotionally addressing the passengers on board the flight and reassuring them.
“You may be fearful about flying, and that’s certainly understandable,” the pilot says in the clip. “But just please know that my first officer and my flight attendants and myself place your safety and the responsibility of carrying you to Miami to your families, your vacations, your meetings at the highest level.”
The pilot’s voice then breaks as he tells the people on board, “I have no higher calling than carefully and professionally transporting you today.”
Mixon posted to TikTok, and the clip instantly went viral, garnering more than 5 million views at the time of publication.
“He just knew exactly what I needed to hear,” Mixon says. “I felt like he was speaking to me. And you kind of look around and it’s like, ‘No, I think every single person on this plane needed to hear what he just said.’ “
Mixon adds that he saw clear reactions from everyone around him.
“Within my vision there wasn’t a dry eye in the vicinity,” he says. “So you could just tell every single person affected or not directly, it’s just a heavy weight that we all feel and you could tell those words we all needed to hear it.”
Praising the pilot for his message, Mixon notes, “While it’s every pilot’s job to inform you and keep you up to date, that was the special breed of person. I wish everyone could be that way. That level of empathy and compassion and kindness. That was above the job description. That’s rare these days.”
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Mixon became a flight attendant in 2022, but has been on medical leave for the last six months. He says he’s conflicted about whether or not he’ll return to his role after the events in D.C., noting, “I can talk myself in and out of it within the span of two seconds.”
And he added that the news of the Jan. 29 crash has shaken airline employees across the country.
“Thankfully I haven’t had to work. I think it’s sad for everyone. I think it’s devastating, absolutely for every single person who hears about the event, but as an airline employee, it’s just an extra burden,” he says. “There is a bond amongst airline employees that no one else will be able to comprehend or understand. It’s just a heavy weight.”
Authorities “don’t believe there are any survivors” from the crash. Three people were on board the helicopter and 64 people were on the passenger plane when they collided Wednesday night. This crash is the deadliest in U.S. history since 2001.
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