But a noise made Lin uneasy, and shortly before take-off, he asked cabin staff if they could take an empty row on the rear right hand side of the plane, which was bound for Kinmen, an island in the Taiwan Strait, local media reported.
Minutes later, Lin was fighting his way out of the plane’s wreckage and searching frantically for his two-year-old son in the shallow, murky waters of the Keelung River.
When he found him three minutes later, his lips were blue and his heart wasn’t beating. Lin gave him CPR.
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According to the Taipei Times, Chou said his family did not believe him at first when he telephoned home to say: “I’m OK. My car got into a crash, it was hit by an aeroplane.”
CNN’s Shen Lu in Beijing contributed to this report.
