'We thought we were going down': Passenger recalls terror of flight through thick wildfire smoke

Michelle Gregoire saw it begin from her window seat behind the plane’s right wing.

She was nearing the end of her flight to Kelowna, B.C., on her way home from Vancouver on Sunday when she noticed the clear, mid-afternoon sky had darkened, turning to a burnt yellow. As the sky grew darker and darker, the cabin filled with the bitter smell of smoke.

“All of a sudden, it just starts to go from red to black and the turbulence started,” Gregoire recalled in an interview. “People were starting to scream. There was a lady in front of me that just reached her hand out across the aisle to a