MIXUP KEEPS WOMAN OFF FATAL FLIGHT

Section: California News

Page: 7B
 

Associated Press

A young California woman who was booked on the doomed Pan Am Flight 103 but opted to take another flight home from Europe says her feelings of sorrow are mixed with the joy of being alive.

 ''I feel grateful," Deborah Engelman, 21, said Friday night. "It's the best Christmas present. I don't need anything now. I have my life."

 A mixup with a travel agent had Engelman booked on Wednesday's Flight 103, which crashed in and around the town of Lockerbie in Scotland less than an hour after taking off from London. All 258 aboard the Boeing 747 died.

 ''It keeps going through my head," she said.

 Engelman had flown to Norway on vacation three weeks earlier and then went to Holland to visit an uncle's family.

 She thought she was booked for a return flight home on Monday and went to the airport with her bags, only to learn that she was booked to leave Wednesday, flying to London to connect with Flight 103 to New York.

 Engelman said she was told she could fly directly Monday from Holland to Los Angeles for an additional $150.

 She said she almost decided to stay two more days and save the money, but having said her goodbyes already and dealing with the confusion, she decided to pay the fare and leave.

 Engelman said she has decided to quit her job on a Miami- based cruise ship because she has had to take a lot of airplane flights.

 ''I didn't like to fly in the first place," she said.

 Her father, Hank Engelman, said he got a "funny feeling" in his stomach when he learned she had almost been a passenger on Flight 103.

 Eight Californians and two former state residents have been identified as passengers aboard Flight 103.