Paula Abdul Said She Survived A Plane Crash That Put Her Career On Hold, But There’s No Official Record Of It Ever Happening
Paula Abdul has seemingly done it all. After rising to pop fame in the 1980s with hits like “Forever Your Girl” and “Opposites Attract,” she went on to become an original “American Idol” judge and win an Emmy, a Grammy, and multiple American Music Awards and MTV Awards.
Yet, in addition to being a revered singer, songwriter, choreographer, dancer, and television personality, Paula also claims she was in a plane crash. According to her, the so-called crash put her career on hold.
After her debut album came out in 1988, Paula released her second album, “Spellbound,” in 1991 and gave numerous performances and TV appearances.
Then, the pop star vanished from the public eye, and years later, Paula attributed her slowed career to a plane crash.
She first mentioned the incident more than a decade after it supposedly took place during a 2003 interview with Dateline. Paula had been on her “Under My Spell” tour, which ran from 1991 to 1992, when the crash allegedly occurred.
“During the end of my world tour, the ‘Spellbound’ tour, when I was traveling from one city to the next, in a small seven-seater plane, one of the engines blew up and the right wing caught on fire and we crash-landed,” she said in a 2019 appearance on RuPaul’s daytime talk show.
“I didn’t have my seatbelt on, and I hit my head on the top of the plane… I withstood 15 cervical spinal surgeries, and I had to take seven years off. And then I reappeared on ‘American Idol.'”
Paula detailed how the crash happened in between her tour stops in St. Louis and Denver. She’s described being tossed around the cabin, and her resulting injuries caused her to endure years of chronic pain and become addicted to painkillers.
However, an investigation into her claims conducted by Jezebel suggests there are no records of such a crash ever happening.
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The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) doesn’t have any record of an aviation accident that matches Paula’s description.
The star, now 62 years old, stated in 2005 that the plane’s engine went on fire approximately 40 minutes into her flight. Afterward, she alleged the aircraft landed in an Iowa cornfield.
However, the closest cornfield in Iowa is hundreds of miles away from St. Louis, meaning the flight would’ve taken around 2 hours and 15 minutes before the plane crashed.
Paula told the Hudson Union Society that “the whole plane was in flames,” yet everyone supposedly survived. However, the incident was never documented.
In 2019, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson reportedly detailed how a crash like that could’ve gone uninvestigated if only minor aircraft damage and minor passenger injuries were sustained.
The spokesperson said the crash would be classified as an “incident” rather than an “accident.”
Paula spoke about the plane crash again in 2018, saying that, back then, she went through the situation “mostly privately,” particularly because of the lack of the internet and the lesser extent of paparazzi.
“I was so afraid of being counted out and looked at as damaged goods. The problem was that, at the time, I was,” she explained during her Music News interview.
“I ended up having to take almost seven years off to have all these different neurosurgeons operating on me.”
Paula ultimately became one of the original “American Idol” judges in 2002 and reportedly had to undergo surgeries stemming from the plane crash while on the show.
She knows that some fans have doubts about her plane crash experience, too, and spoke out against the skeptics in 2020.
“You know what? It’s like, there are seven other people that were on the plane, who were in that plane accident with me. So, I really don’t care what people have to say. I don’t,” she told Yahoo at the time.
“It’s like, you learn and grow through wisdom and experience in this business, especially with the internet. You can’t take things personally, and the things that resonate with you that can help you become better, the best version of yourself, you hold onto, and you work through that.”
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