Scottish couple lucky to miss overbooked Malaysian flight
A Scottish couple had been planning to fly on Malaysia Airlines MH17 but switched to a later KLM flight because it was full. Mr Barry Sim and his wife Izzy (pictured), who heard about the tragedy on the way to the airport, spoke of the “sick feeling” they experienced on hearing the news. SCREENGRAB: RAZOR TV
A Scottish couple had been planning to fly on Malaysia Airlines MH17 but switched to a later KLM flight because it was full.
Barry Sim and his wife Izzy, who heard about the tragedy on the way to the airport, spoke of the “sick feeling” they experienced on hearing the news. Sim told the Telegraph: “You get this sick feeling in the pit of your stomach We started getting butterflies. Your heartbeat starts going.”
His wife added: “There must have been someone watching over us and saying ‘you must not get on that flight’.
“Coming to the airport in the taxi I was just crying … I feel like I’ve been given a second chance.”
Up to 10 British passengers were feared to be among the 298 people killed.
The couple said they flew Malaysia Airlines frequently.
Sim told Telegraph: “In my mind lightning never strikes twice in the same place so I am still philosophical that you get on the flight and you go about your life. I know my wife doesn’t feel like that. Probably the last thing she wants to do now is fly, especially to Kuala Lumpur.”
One Adelaide woman, who took MH17 a day earlier, also told ABC Radio that she twice came close to being on the fatal flight. “We flew into Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam on the MH17 flight, the day before, so it’s a bit surreal to think that, you know, one day later and I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you right now,” she said.
She had originally booked herself on the fatal flight but decided to change it, thinking she would be too jet-lagged for work on Monday. She told ABC Radio: “Then there was another chance we could’ve been on that flight when we got to Schiphol Airport on Wednesday to check in they’d overbooked that flight — so we were on standby and we only found out literally a minute before the boarding closed that we were actually going to be leaving that day.”
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