It’s every traveler'sworst nightmare: Imagine, mid-flight, hearing a thundering boom and being choked by thick smoke as flight attendants warn you to brace for impact.

Passengers aboard a JetBlue flight are thankful to be alive after a harrowing experience on Thursday when a flight that took off from Long Beach Airport in California blew one of two enginesjust 15 minutes after takeoff, USA Today reports.

Flight 1416, which was destined for Austin, Texas, had just taken off when trouble began as the plane flew over the open ocean. Passengers reported a loud pop and the cabin started to fill with thick smoke.

“The flight attendants were yelling ‘brace, brace’ and they kept repeating it and repeating it on the top of their lungs,” passenger Jarrod West told CBS Los Angeles.

In a frightening twist, as the cabin filled with caustic smoke, the oxygen masks didn’t automatically drop down, forcing flight attendants to manually deploythem, according to CNN.

Passengers aboard the flight gave a chilling inside look of the situation in real time over social media. Several passengers posted videos and selfiesinside the smoke-filled cabin. Twilight actor Jackson Rathbone, who was aboard with his wife and child, tweeted about the ordeal as it happened.

Luckily, the plane was able to make a sharp turn and return to Long Beach Airport where the 142 passengers and five crew members evacuated via emergency slides, CBS Los Angeles reports. Three people sustained minor injuries and were treated at the scene. One person was taken to a hospital for shortness of breath.

Once safely on the ground, Rathbone posted a selfie of he and his family with the disabled aircraft in the background on celebrity social media sitewhosay. According to yahoo.com, posting survival selfies to social media can become somewhat of a trend.

Rathbone later tweeted that passengers were debriefed about the incident before being put on a later flight to Austin, CNN reports.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor toldthe Associated Press that the crew declared an emergency due to a problem with one of two engines on the Airbus A320, but JetBlue has yet to release a statement on the incident.

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