Posted on 12/22/2009 9:05:01 PM PST by AtlasStalled
An American Airlines plane crashed and broke in two after landing at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to local reports. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Details were not immediately available, however, passengers on the plane told local media that flight 331 had just arrived from Miami in pouring rain when the accident occurred. The flight apparently originated in Washington, D.C.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
There obviously were survivors speaking to media, so hopefully they all made it out despite what sounds like a horrific crash with the plane breaking in half.
Funny you mention that, in 1989 at that airport they greeted me with Rum Punch!
or Flushing/Corona. Definitely not Jamaica (Queens)
Thank God.
It usually is if it's raining... heavy rain even moreso.
No, it’s in America, in a city where hundreds of brave firefighters and policemen lost their lives in their heroic efforts to rescue their fellow man.
plane crashed and broke in two and all passengers exited safely? That doesn’t compute but glad everyone appears to be OK, I think
Wx really doesn’t seem “that” bad. 1400’ broken layer. A good ILS, approach lights and rabbits should have helped to prevent the “long landing”, more to the incident.
Back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, some airline pilots referred to La Guardia Airport as “La Garbage Airport.” And this was while they were talking to the passengers before landing!
It reminds me of of the F-100 Crash at Little Rock 10 years ago.
Get-there-itis, perhaps?
Damn!
MORE INFO:
Aircraft is N977AN(ACARSD), built 2001.
You never really know for sure till they put the parts back together and listen to the tapes. But you can certainly assume that it was a “hard landing” to break the airframe into.
thx
“Wx really doesn’t seem “that” bad.”
Note the “+SHRA”. Lots can happen after you land in the TDZ with +SHRA. Loss vis on the rollout, or just hydroplaning off the side of the runway. It happens.
Of course, you sound like you’re in the business so you know this. The apparent fact that there were no fatalities (we’ll see about that), indicates it wasn’t a terribly violent deceleration, though it’s tough to break a ‘37 (keel beams are a good thing) so it must have absorbed quite a lot of abuse before it cracked. Still, if you bust a fuselage, the chance of fatalities are pretty good unless you were barely moving when it happened. I hope it’s one those rare cases where they didn’t croak anyone.
From Airliners:
Live radio broadcast from KIN is reporting that 3 passengers are seriously injuries and are now being treated at the Kingston Public Hospital. The news report also says the emergency service is now activated and the airport is now closed.
So far there are no fatalities reported.
From another aviation Forum.
RWY 12 has an upslope for the last 300 feet.
The a/c went through the fence and onto the road, which the change in elevation probably caused a break in the center fuselage, at a low speed.
Sometimes you just get lucky. Hopefully, that luck will stay with the folks that went to the hospital. Like I said, a ‘37 can take a horrendous amount of abuse before it cracks (HP into the approach lights at DFW, bounced and flew to IAH, SW at AMA in heavy rain, SW excursion aborting after V1). Lots of folks are still kicking because of the way that thing was/is built.
I fear something from the MD-80 family would not fare nearly as well.
SIDE NOTE:
A Virgin Airways flight, running 14 hours late, was just pushing away from the gate when this happened, and the airport closed.
I get your point that anything can happen but that is a lot of what-ifs for +RW with a detectable ceiling and vsby. My initial comment was based on the “bad wx” report. If he had the mins to start the approach...
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