Last-minute airplane switches usually cause headaches, but one change of plans saved Swedish soccer team Dalkurd FF.
Dalkurd was scheduled to fly on the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday, but team officials elected to take an alternate route from Barcelona back to Sweden in the hours before the ill-fated flight took off, according to Agence France Presse.
Instead of keeping its original travel plans, Dalkurd booked players and staff on flights which flew through Zurich and Munich instead of France. The Germanwings Airbus A320 that Dalkurd originially booked itself on ultimately crashed, killing 150 people on board.
“We were supposed to be on that plane,” sporting director Adil Kizil said. “There were four planes that left around the same time and that flew north over the Alps. Four planes and we had players on three of them. You can say we were very, very lucky.”
Goalkeeper Frank Pettersson used Twitter to tell the world he and his teammates are alive and well, saying “To all those who have tried to contact us in the past few hours we are home and we are fine. It was another plane. May they rest in peace.”
[tweet https://twitter.com/frankpettersson/status/580356825717088258 align=’center’]
Dalkurd currently plays in Sweden’s third division. It has roots in Sweden’s Kurdish community and reportedly has supporters from the Kurdish diaspora around the globe.
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@Reuters
