Plane crash survivor returns to Canada to thank 'heroes' who saved his life

David Chetrit has been touring eastern Ontario, thanking the first responders and medical staff who saved his life after his small plane crashed last year east of Ottawa.

Chetrit's Cessna 150B went down on July 26, 2023 near the town of Alexandria, Ont., killing his instructor and leaving him with life-threatening injuries. 

Four days later, he opened his eyes in a hospital bed, with no memory of what happened. 

"I remember, I sat down in the aircraft," Chetrit said. "I put the belt [on]. I switch on the camera, the recording mic — and blackout."

After more than a year of recovering in Israel, his home country, he was determined to return to Canada and track down and thank the people who saved his life. 

By contacting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which investigated the crash, Chetrit was able to meet and thank those "heroes," including North Glengarry firefighters and staff at the Glengarry Memorial Hospital.

Chetrit's visit from the other side of the world to say thank you was "just something unprecedented," said Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes, an emergency physician at the hospital.

Shortly after Chetrit's arrival, he was transported to The Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus for surgery, and Yuan-Innes said her team didn't fully know how much he'd recovered. 

"I didn't know if he was able to walk or speak or anything then, and so for him to just walk in the room on his own two feet — with boxes of beautifully wrapped chocolates — it wasn't what I was expecting," she said.

"Everyone was so happy."

The day Chetrit stopped in to thank the firefighters, North Glengarry Fire Services posted on Facebook about the "very special evening."

"Recently, the survivor of the incident reached out to us wanting to meet the first responders who saved his life," the post said.

"Tonight, these members were recognized for their combined effort and performance of their duty in the highest tradition of the North Glengarry Fire Department, and for their actions which saved the passenger's life."

'Unbelievably incredible rescue'

Chetrit's throat and neck were badly injured in the crash, and English is not his first language, so he spoke to CBC with the help of his girlfriend, Emily Kaplan.

After the plane went down, first responders spent four minutes cutting Chetrit out of the wreckage. They rushed him to Glengarry Memorial Hospital where he was intubated so he could breathe.

The hospital was "not prepared for a trauma of that level," said Kaplan, but they nevertheless "kept him alive and stabilized him."

After an hour and a half of work, Chetrit was moved to The Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus for surgery.

"Somebody kept a hand plugging the hole in his neck [the whole time]," Kaplan said.

As Kaplan put it, the story of Chetrit's "unbelievably incredible rescue" has since turned into the story of an incredible recovery.

In hospital when war broke out

Chetrit stayed at the Civic for a month while his family in France and Israel worked to get him admitted to the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel.

There, his father and two brothers could support him. On Oct. 4, 2023, he was accepted to orthopedic rehab at the centre.

"The war, it began three days later," Chetrit said.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and others stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage.

Chetrit was one of the few civilians allowed to remain at the hospital after the attack. Most other patients were sent home to free up space.

"Around me were a lot of soldiers," Chetrit said. "It was all young men, soldiers who had lost arms or legs or been blinded. It was hard." 

But it also gave him a different perspective on his own circumstances.

"When you see that, you feel happy. I was happy because I can walk. I have hands. I have legs. I see. I hear. I was the king in the hospital," he joked.

'A new life'

Kaplan and Chetrit didn't know each other before the accident. In fact, had Chetrit's plane not crashed, they would have gone on their first date two days later.

When Chetrit didn't show up, Kaplan thought she'd been ghosted — until his family got in touch.

Then a few days after his final surgery this June, Chetrit sent a message to Kaplan, just to say hello.

"I think I wrote back something like, 'Oh my God, hi, how are you?'" Kaplan said. "The last I had heard he was in critical condition and had fallen out of the sky."

Chetrit said he decided to reach out as by then he'd been out of the hospital for a while and had regained his old strength.

"I thought that this is a new life," he said. "I feel that I can come back to life."

But in his new life, he still wants to be a pilot, his lifelong dream. He moved to Canada when he was 39 to follow it, getting his private pilot's licence in Winnipeg and then moving to Montreal to work toward his commercial licence.

Chetrit said his near-death experience hasn't extinguished that desire. 

"I don't remember the crash," he said. "It's not scary. It's not painful. I lost my voice, yes, that's it. And to fly, well — we say the oldest dream of humanity is to fly."