“I was able to roll up out of bed today put some clothes on put this brace on and walked all the way out around the corner and walked myself back. I’m pretty lucky, pretty fortunate to be able to do that after the incident,” explained Pothier as he sat next to his hospital bed wearing a back-brace looking happy and upbeat.

It’s been three days since he was forced to eject from the Hawker Hunter jet he was flying right before it crashed into the ocean two miles off Kewalo Basin.

Pothier was doing drills with the Hawaii Air National Guard’s Sentry Aloha exercises when he ran into trouble. He says he tried to get back to the runway but couldn’t

“At that point, I’m just looking down at the water and I see all kinds of boats and things out there so I didn’t want to hurt those folks either. I just made a couple of turns and realized the airplanes not going to make it so pull the handle and got out,” said Pothier.

The National Transportation Safety Board is doing an investigation to find out exactly what went wrong with the jet.

Pothier said he’s just grateful he made it out in time.

“I remember the whole thing. The canopy coming off, I saw some daylight, I was still flying a little bit so I had my hand on the stick and pulled the handle and then it all happened.”

Pothier said he owes a great deal to Mack Ladner of Extreme Parasail. Ladner happened to be leading a parasail cruise when Pothier’s plane went down.

“You can’t ask for a better more qualified person to be right there in an ejection scenario than Mack,” explained Pothier.

One of the biggest dangers for pilots after ejecting into the ocean is the parachute filling with water and dragging them under. Ladner knew exactly what to do to prevent that from happening.

“That’s what I do every single day. I work with parachutes. We don’t crash very often but I’m trained for if they crash or if people get tangled within the parachute, what to do and to be calm,” explained Ladner.

Ladner even visited Pothier in the hospital on Friday.

“It was cool. He’s an awesome guy. I was glad to see he was doing okay. He had intense back surgery and he was already standing which was incredible,” said Ladner.

