Air Florida Flight 90 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Washington National Airport to Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport, with an intermediate stopover in Tampa. On January 13, 1982, the aircraft crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River, just moments after takeoff. Of the 74 passengers and five crew members on board, only four passengers and one crew member, flight attendant Kelly Duncan, survived.
I was supposed to be one of the passengers on that plane.
I had been staying at a hotel near Capitol Hill, exploring legal internship possibilities in Washington, D.C. After completing my meetings, my plan was to fly down to Florida to join my parents. On the morning of the flight, however, I overslept. Realizing I was running dangerously late, I hurriedly checked out, hailed a cab, and urged the driver toward the airport.
About a third of the way there, a sudden wave of panic hit me: I had left my briefcase in the hotel room.
We turned around and raced back to the hotel. I managed to retrieve it, but by the time I walked back down to the lobby, I knew I had missed my window. My flight was gone.
As I stood by the front desk, figuring out how to book a later flight, the lobby television screen flickered with breaking news. A commercial airliner had just crashed into the freezing waters of the Potomac River. As the anchor read the preliminary details, the horrific reality set in.
That was my flight.
Trembling and in complete shock, I turned to a man standing near me in the lobby and showed him my ticket. “That was my plane,” I whispered.
He looked at the ticket, then looked at me, and said softly, “You must have a powerful guardian angel.”
…Decades later, those words still echo in my mind. I still do not know why I was spared while so many others perished, and I am still struck by the agonizing question: Why them and not me? While I may never find a complete answer to that question in this life, I have come to believe that God works through the ordinary and the frustrating—like a forgotten briefcase—to enact His divine protection.
Every year on October 2nd, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Guardian Angels. For most, it is a day of abstract theological reflection on the unseen companions God appoints to watch over our steps. But for me, this feast day is intensely personal. It brings me right back to that freezing January morning in 1982 and the stranger in the lobby who recognized what I could not yet process.
The Catholic tradition teaches that our guardian angels do not merely protect us from physical harm, but guide us through both spiritual and temporal needs, steering our path even when we feel we are stumbling. My frantic, panicked race back to a Capitol Hill hotel room felt like a failure of planning. In reality, it was a profound act of intervention.
I may never understand the mystery of why my timeline was altered while 74 passengers and five crew members met a tragic end in the Potomac River. However, the Feast of the Guardian Angels serves as a poignant, yearly reminder that my life is a borrowed gift. It challenges me to live with intentionality, ensuring that the years I was so mysteriously granted are used to serve others, honoring the protective, silent wings that turned me around just in time
Photo by Bradley Gossett on Unsplash
