|
|
« Fire quickly dealt with at Burrillville restaurant | Today | Carcieri to address storm response, trip to Iraq » December 17, 2007Flight passenger: Hard landing, leftward drift and snowThe US Airways Express plane landed "hard" at T.F. Green Airport last night, and passenger Richard Clark could begin to hear other passengers' fear turn into words: "Oh dear." "This is not good." Then, instead of the panic or the screaming seen in disaster movies: "Everyone," he said," got quiet." Moments before, the plane with 31 passengers aboard had popped out of cloud cover. Clark, who said he served in the Air Force and has done private piloting, saw something unusual in at most 20 seconds: the runway. Unusual, because on the many flights the 57-year-old Cranston man said he has taken to T.F. Green, the plane would "pop" out of clouds and head toward the runway from what seemed a higher distance and for a longer time. He normally sees houses and other sites before a runway. There'd been no hints of any trouble on the way to Rhode Island, Clark said. He was returning from Manchester, England, and had landed in Philadelphia, where the weather was fine, and boarded his flight to Rhode Island on time. With the hard landing behind them, the plane headed down the runway, and it seemed very smooth. But the plane seemed to have tilted left, Clark recalled, and "we started slowly veering to the left." He said the pilot did his best to keep the plane on track and not to overcompensate. "We started getting snow kicked up over the wing," said Clark, whose seat was 11F, which was just behind the wings. "Several people are saying, 'This is not good, this is not right.' " Clark said it seemed that landing gear had collapsed and the plane was riding on a wing or wings as the plane made a slow, long leftward turn. The plane eventually ended up in what he estimated was a 90-degree angle from the course of the runway.
Clark could feel the tension, but said the scene inside the plane never became one of loud panic. Lights did not flicker inside. After the plane came to a stop, Clark said there seemed to be several disconcerting minutes before the pilot or crew made contact with passengers. He said a passenger told everyone things were all right. The pilot eventually did come on and say in an apologetic voice that there had been a bad landing and that he'd been in contact with emergency responders, whose trucks passengers saw approaching. "We could see the left wing was resting on the snow," Clark said. There were what felt like many waits, Clark said, particularly for responders doing head counts and making sure people were all right, before passengers got to the terminal. The runway was still closed this morning, and the plane today was being moved to a hangar. Federal authorities are investigating. The airport itself is open and operating. Posted by Mike McKinney CommentsFokion Burgess | December 17, 2007 1:16 PM link Instruments should have allowed a good landing in pretty low fog. I think the runway must have been iced up, or the landing gear had a problem. not on the plane | December 17, 2007 2:31 PM link Neither. Pay attention to the news once in a while. EMT | December 17, 2007 11:21 PM link Post a commentPlease be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. Name and email are required; email address will not publish. |
|
ADVERTISING |
|
|
|
|
| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
ProJo 9 to 5 News Blog
Oct 2005 - March 2006
I was sitting right next to the wing that hit the ground. I remember looking out and all I saw was fog. I could tell that we were getting close to the airport because I could see street lights through the fog and they weren't that far off. I'm not sure why they decided to still land that plane, considering how low the fog was to the ground. The fog never broke until we hit the runway.
You could tell from the way we hit the ground that something wasn't right. I just heard shock coming from people when we hit the ground. Next thing I knew, I looked out the window and I saw that we were still, on the ground. The wing was covered in snow.
I owe that pilot my life.