Delta Airlines flight skidded off the runway and crashed to a fence few feet away from cold waters in LaGuardia airport on Thursday morning. The Delta flight crashed its nose onto a fence and skidded to a halt few feet away the frigid waters.
The Delta Flight 1086 circled New York City due to ice and snow before landing a little past 11 am. As soon as it touched down, the passengers felt something had gone wrong, the planes landing wheels had very little traction and skidded for around 20 seconds.
Jared Faellaci, a passenger of Flight 1086, disclosed to CNN that they felt something is not right and the aircraft's wheels were not working right. The thought of where the plane would end up is what worried everyone.
"It was cause for a moment of prayer and a moment of reflection, as people were scared," he said. "The pilot did a phenomenal job."
Between 4500 feet to 5000 feet down runway 13, the MD-88 skidded to the left side of the tracks and stopped on a small embarkment few feet away the cold waters of Flushing Bay. All 127 passengers of the said plane would have been down the icy waters.
Two industrial cranes were used to lift the 140,000 pound airplane which was perched on the metal security fence from where its nose crashed to a halt, CBS New York reported.
Passengers were safely rescued off the crashed plane under the sub-zero freezing weather to the emergency vehicles that responded the scene. Twenty four people suffered minor injuries where three of those were transported to a nearby hospital.