Matthew McConaughey detailed the "suspended disbelief" he and his wife Camila Alves experienced last month when their Lufthansa flight suddenly dropped 4,000 feet.
"It's zero gravity," the "Dallas Buyers Club" actor told Kelly Ripa on her SiriusXM podcast "Let’s Talk off Camera" in a preview of Wednesday’s episode, Entertainment Tonight reported. "Your red wine and the glass and the plates that your food was on are all suspended, floating, still just in the air. And to look at it for that long, which wasn't that long — one, two, three, four — and then everything just comes crashing down."
"It was a hell of a scare," he added. "A 100% feeling of knowing you have no way to get control of this situation in the moment."
The 53-year-old said his tray table held him in his seat since he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when the plane dropped.
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"There was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened. I just immediately reached over, made sure Camila had her seatbelt on," he added.
He said that they held hands wondering if another drop was coming.
"Another one did come," he said. "It was odd. You hear people's reactions. Some people were ghost silent. Some people had big bursts of laughter. And it was not like, 'Oh, this is fun.' It was like, 'I'm in shock.'"
"And then, you know how it is on a plane — you see the flight attendant not looking extremely confident, and you’re like, ‘Uh oh.’"
Ripa added that her eyes immediately go to the flight attendants in a potential emergency.
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The "Interstellar" star said the Frankfurt-bound flight, which had to be rerouted to Washington, D.C., was the "hairiest" one he’s experienced "by far." He said he eventually made it to Vietnam, which was his final destination. The couple wasn't injured on the flight.
Coincidentally, McConaughey said he had a friend who’s a pilot sitting next to him at the time.
"As a person who's not a pilot, my mind goes to the actual engineering of the plane," he added. "The steel, it buckled. And you go, 'How can something withstand that?'" he says. "I happened to have a friend of mine sitting next to me who was a pilot. And he was calm as could be. I was like, 'Can the plane hold that?' And he was like, 'These things are so tested, that yes, don't worry, the plane structurally can hold that.' That was a big relief."
Ripa teased him about always flying with a personal pilot just in case.
"From now on I always have my own pilot," he laughed. "A pilot to the left, a pilot to the right," adding seriously that his friend said he could fly the plane "no problem" if necessary.
Alves first revealed the couple was on the flight last month when she shared a short Instagram video, showing food and other items strewn about the plane.
"On Flight last night, plane dropped almost 4000 feet, 7 people went to the hospital," the 41-year-old wrote at the time. "Everything was flying everywhere. To respect the privacy of those around me that’s all I am showing but the plane was a CHAOS And the turbulence keep on coming."
Lufthansa, in a statement to FOX Business, called the turbulence "brief but severe."
"Lufthansa Flight 469 diverted to Dulles International Airport and landed without incident around 9:10 p.m. local time after the crew reported encountering severe turbulence at 37,000 feet altitude over Tennessee," the FAA said in a statement.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said after the plane landed at Dulles, "authority personnel responded to the flight and transported seven people to local hospitals."
The FAA added it was launching an investigation into what happened on board the Airbus A330 that was flying from Austin to Germany.
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"Lufthansa regrets the inconvenience caused to passengers," the airline said in part. "The safety and well-being of passengers and crew members is Lufthansa's top priority at all times."
