In September 2008, Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker was involved in a horrifying plane crash.
Though he survived, he still bears the physical and emotional scars today.
So how did it happen?
Barker and Adam Goldstein, also known as DJ AM, had been visiting Columbia,
South Carolina, for a gig near the University of South Carolina. After performing the show the two,
joined by friends Chris Baker and Charles Still, boarded a small private jet bound
for California. The plane was piloted by Sarah Lemmon and first officer James Bland.
However, the aircraft never made it off the ground. As the plane began
speeding down the runway for takeoff, air traffic controllers suddenly saw sparks.
The Learjet then began to veer off the end of the runway. It crashed into a perimeter fence
and crossed a roadway before slamming into some mounds of raised ground. Then it burst
into what the National Transportation Safety Board called a, quote, "significant fire."
Tragically, Baker, Still, Lemmon, and Bland were all killed in the crash, while Barker and
Goldstein suffered second- and third-degree burns. The fire was so terrible that NTSB investigators
worried the plane's black box, which holds recordings of the pilot's communications and
the aircraft's movements, wouldn't be recoverable or would still work. But they were able to recover
some information, and in 2010, they released their report on the cause of the crash.
According to Billboard, the tires of the Learjet 60 were under-inflated. The jets' tires lose about
two percent of their pressure every day, and if not checked and maintained, have to be changed
every eight days. The last time these tires had been checked was three weeks earlier. As a result,
all four tires exploded only seconds apart as the jet was speeding down the runway at 150 mph.
The situation would only get worse as pieces of the tires hit the plane at incredibly high speeds,
causing enough damage to the plane's hydraulic system that the brakes began to fail. Also,
the thrust reversers, which are used to slow down the aircraft,
were damaged. This added more power to the engines, so the plane actually sped up.
The pilot was also relatively inexperienced, with just 35 hours of flying time on that
model aircraft. Even though the jet was already going too fast to stay safely on the ground,
the pilot attempted to abort the takeoff. The NTSB said for a plane like the Learjet 60,
pilots are trained never to reject takeoff above 136 knots. However, for this flight,
the decision to stop was made at 144 knots. The high velocity, coupled with the loss of
the thrust reversers and the additional engine power, caused the plane to race off the runway.
The crash profoundly changed Barker's life. In 2015, he described the moments
after the crash to Larry King: "I caught fire trying to go
to the front of the plane to save my two friends and get to the pilots possibly. I caught fire."
For Barker, it only got worse from there.
In 2019, he told Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast,
"When I jumped through the emergency exit when the plane blew up,
I was in such a hurry to exit the plane I jumped right into the jet,
which is full of fuel. My whole body lit up. I had jet fuel in my whole body.
I burped jet fuel for almost three months. I was ripping off my clothes because that's
what my instinct told me to do [...] but I was still on fire because I was soaked in jet fuel."
A driver happened to witness the crash and rushed
to their aid as Barker and DJ AM tried to put out the flames.
"There were two people out of the plane?"
"Yes."
"We're going to presume that was Travis Barker and DJ AM,
both trying to put the flames out on each other?!"
Barker said that this bystander shouted at him to stop, drop, and roll, which helped extinguish the
flames that had enveloped around 65 percent of his body. Barker and DJ AM were then taken to
the burn unit of a local hospital; Barker's foot nearly had to be amputated as a result
of the fire, and he had to learn how to walk and perform daily functions again.
He also suffered from psychological wounds, and at one point contemplated
ending his own life. He wasn't alone with his mental health struggles.
DJ AM, who also survived the crash, died just a year later from a drug overdose,
and friends told The New York Times that they blamed his death on the trauma of the crash.
As for Barker, he has refused to fly since the crash. Barker told ABC that he dropped
out of Blink-182's Australian tour in 2013 due to his fear of getting on another aircraft
and ended up traveling by boat to Europe for their continental tour.
"You won't get on a plane to this day, right?"
"No."
Barker told Joe Rogan that it took months of surgery and therapy, both physical and mental,
to overcome the trauma of the crash. But now he tried to give back to those
who helped him by assisting the recovery of other burn victims.
"I go over there at Christmas and see burn, you know,
burn victims that are over there in the burn center and help out any way I can."