Aaliyah seemed to reveal she had an uneasy feeling about getting on the plane that tragically killed her, in final texts to her former boyfriend, Damon “Dame” Dash.
“She texted me saying, ‘I don’t like the plane.’ I told her, ‘Don’t get on it,’” Dash told Us Weekly in an interview published on the 25th anniversary of the Princess of R&B’s death on Tuesday.
“However, she said she had to do it for the video,” he continued, referring to how the hitmaker was flying from the Bahamas to Florida after filming her “Rock the Boat” music video.
“She knew the plane wasn’t right, and she was always scared of planes,” Dash added, explaining how Aaliyah, who was 22, would travel with a “satin pillow” and “called it her good-luck pillow.”
The businessman speculated that Aaliyah ultimately boarded the plane so she could quickly return to him.
“She said, ‘I am just going to do this video then come right back,’” he said.
In Kathy Iandoli’s 2022 biography on Aaliyah titled “Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah,” she explained how an eyewitness alleged that Aaliyah vocalized her concerns about the plane and was given a pill by one of her team members after saying she had a headache, per Us Weekly.
According to Kingsley Russell, who was working for a transportation company, the “Try Again” songstress was carried on the twin-engine Cessna 402B while asleep around 6:50 p.m. on Aug. 25, 2001.
Also on board was her bodyguard Scott Gallin, 41; glam team Anthony Dudd, 34, Christopher Maldonado, 32, and Eric Forman, 29; music executives Gina Smith, 30, and Douglas Kratz, 28; and the singer’s friend Keith Wallace, 49.
Flying the plane was pilot Luis Antonio Morales, 30, who was not approved to fly the aircraft, an investigation revealed, per CBS. He was also under the influence of alcohol and cocaine.
The plane crashed less than a minute after leaving the runway and caught fire.
Additionally, an investigation revealed that the plane was overloaded by 700 pounds and the weight onboard wasn’t evenly distributed.
Ultimately, Aaliyah’s “Rock the Boat” video was released two months after she died in October 2001.
According to the New York Times, Aaliyah’s parents, Michael and Diane Haughton, filed a lawsuit against the video production company that coordinated transportation for their daughter while in the Bahamas.
The duo reached an undisclosed settlement with Instinct Productions in 2003.
