154 survive as jet skids past runway; 92 hurt, none dire

— An American Airlines flight carrying 154 people skidded across a Jamaican runway in heavy rain, bouncing across the tarmac before it stopped just short of the Caribbean Sea, officials and witnesses said.

Everyone aboard survived, with 92 taken to hospitals and 13 admitted, but none of the injuries was considered lifethreatening, said Jamaican Information Minister Daryl Vaz.

One woman had surgery for a broken nose and cuts on her face.

The crash appears similar to one in 1999 involving an American Airlines jet at Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field. Flight 1420 flew from Dallas to Little Rock late on June 1 and landed in heavy rain.

The MD-82 jet ran off the north end of Runway 4R, hit an approach-light structure, broke apart and caught fire. Eleven people died in the crash, which the National Transportation Safety Board blamed on the pilot.

Touching down Tuesday night in a fierce rain, the Boeing 737-800 slammed into the runway of Kingston’s Manley International Airport. The aircraft skidded to a halt atthe edge of the sea, leaving battered and bruised passengers screaming in panic as the smell of jet fuel spread through the darkened cabin, which had cracked open in places.

“I just wanted to get the hell out of there, as far as I could, because I could smell the fumes, and I knew that if it blew, it could be a pretty big fireball,” said Gary Wehrwein, 67, who was traveling with his wife, Pilar Abaurrea, from Keene, N.H.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said 76 of the passengers were Americans.

The plane stopped on the sandy edge of an airport access road, and Transport Minister Mike Henry described it as a “Christmas miracle.”

“If the plane was going faster, it would have gone into the sea,” Henry said.

In daylight Wednesday, as soldiers stood around the wrecked jet, the damage was clear: The fuselage was cracked open, its left main landing gear had collapsed, and its nose was crushed and pointing off toward the sea.

Members of the U.S. safety board were assisting an investigation led by Jamaica’s government, but there was no immediate explanation for what caused the plane to overshoot the runway. Some aviation experts speculatedthe pilot was descending too fast for the conditions.

Investigators were expected to analyze, among other things, whether the plane should have been landing in such bad weather, said American spokesman Tim Smith in Fort Worth, although he added that other planes had landed safely in the heavy rain.

“At this point, it’s now going to be in the hands of the NTSB and the [Federal Aviation Administration], plus any Jamaican government authorities that may be involved, and to start and sort of backtrack and see what happened and how it can be prevented from happening again,” Smith said.

Flight 331 took off from Miami International Airport at 8:52 p.m. - about an hour late - and arrived at Manley International Airport at 10:22 p.m. It originated at Reagan National Airport in Washington.

The jet had a crew of six and 148 passengers, many of them Jamaicans going home for Christmas, officials said.

Passengers said the inflight turbulence forced the crew to halt the beverage service three times before finally giving up.

Before descending, the pilot warned of more turbulence but said it likely wouldn’t be much worse, Abaurrea said.

Wehrwein remembers coming out to sheets of torrential, “hurricane-type” rain as they walked along the sand to a bus to take them to the terminal, where they encountered airport staff unprepared to handle the situation.

Henry defended the response of the airport staff, saying the emergency services acted professionally and in accordance with international guidelines by getting to the scene and tending to the injured in 511/2 minutes.

He said nine ambulances responded and got the injuredto hospital in due time.

While flights have resumed from the airport, bigger carriers such as Virgin and British Airways will be diverted to the Sangster airport in Montego Bay.

Henry said everything should be back to normal by today.

Information for this article was contributed by Danica Coto, David McFadden, Matthew Lee, Kirk Wright, Mike Melia, Carol Druga and Sofia Mannos of The Associated Press and by Noel E. Oman of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/24/2009

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