Viral Figure Skater Sets Record Straight on Missed Flight

A figure skater said to have a ticket on Wednesday’s doomed American Airlines flight was actually bound for another city entirely, he tells the Daily Beast, contrary to a viral report online.

Jon Maravilla said his dog’s size was the reason a gate agent denied him boarding for a flight on Delta Air Lines to Atlanta—not to the nation’s capital.

That contradicts what Russian media wrote about the tragedy. RIA Novosti reported Maravilla was informed his dog could not be carried on a flight from Wichita to Washington because of size restrictions. Unable to board the plane, the outlet reported that he departed by car.

Maravilla is a native of Virginia, he told the Daily Beast, but now lives in the midwest. He said he was catching a flight to Atlanta before connecting on a second flight to Detroit. He said he did not know where the false reports about boarding a flight to Washington came from, but said he was devastated by the fate of his friends.

“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “I was just with them watching them have lots of fun and just enjoying their time.”

The D.C.-bound flight, carrying 64 people, collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers on board and crashed in the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday.

Maravilla documented his rejection from boarding his Detroit flight in his Instagram stories. He posted an image from inside Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport with the caption: “Not allowed past gate to board flight. Get me out of Kansas, please.”

He posted a second image once he began driving later, stating he had a 14 hour ride ahead of him.

RIA Novosti also reported that Maravilla said there were at least 14 figure skaters on board the plane, in addition to coaches and parents. He told the Daily Beast that many of the east coast’s most prominent up-and-coming skaters were on the flight.

“I don’t want to name names,” he said, calling the event “such a tragedy.”

Maravilla told the Daily Beast he was in a parking lot when he pieced together that many of his friends were likely dead. He first heard rumors about a crash from people who had contacted him in fear he might be on board.

He started researching the flight and discovered the rumored crash lined up with when the Wichita flight would be near the D.C. airport. After calls to people on board weren’t going through, he said he called one skater’s sister around 9:20 p.m.—about 40 minutes after the collision. She was already in tears, he said, and that’s the moment he knew her brother, mom, and dad were on the doomed flight.

Maravilla said his 17-year-old brother, who’s also a skater, had taken the tragedy especially hard. He had just spent the week training and performing with many of the victims, and had even swapped jackets with Spencer Lane, who’s confirmed as one of the dead, before they parted ways in Wichita.

Russian news outlet TASS reported that among those on board were Russian coaches Vadim Naumov and Yevgenia Shishkova, former world champions in pairs figure skating and Inna Volyanskaya, a former pair skater who competed for the Soviet Union.

A large contingent of figure skaters were in the Wichita area after participating in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, held last week at the city’s Intrust Bank Arena.

U.S. Figure Skating, the sport’s national governing body, confirmed Thursday morning that “several members of our skating community” were on the flight.