Jennifer Aniston Says Her 'Fear Of Flying' Was Realized In Plane Emergency

Jennifer Aniston’s fear of flying kicked into high gear when a private plane she was on blew a tire and made an emergency landing.

The “Murder Mystery” actress recounted the incident on a special “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Thursday before the NBA Finals. Kimmel himself had intimate knowledge of what happened because his wife, Molly McNearney, was also on board, along with Aniston’s “Friends” costar Courteney Cox.

In February the women were en route to celebrating Aniston’s 50th birthday in Mexico but the party mood evaporated.

“It was one of those things where on the takeoff, on the taxi, we heard an explosion,” Aniston said in the clip above (fast forward to 4:15). The plane ascended without a problem and all seemed well until two hours into the flight.

“The flight attendant comes over to me and she says, ‘The pilots would like to talk to you,’” Aniston recalled. That triggered Aniston’s “real fear of flying” and she asked another friend to head to the cockpit “because there’s no way this is going to go talk to the pilot,” the actress explained, referring to herself.

The friend returned with alarming news. “She comes out and she says, ’Yeah, well, we’ve turned around, we’re actually going back to California. They found some debris from a wheel on the runway. They think it’s from our plane.”

At that point, Aniston said, “Everybody starts texting all of a sudden their spouses and their children and I’m like what’s going on?” Kimmel interjected that he received one of those messages from his wife. Aniston and the talk show host made light of the moment (you’ll have to watch).

Kimmel later showed a photo of the landing gear missing a wheel.

Now that is no joke.

The Gulfstream carrying the revelers reportedly made a “slightly shaky but successful” emergency landing at a Southern California airport.