Air Canada flight 624 Crash Lands in Halifax

[punkwax]

Fortunately, no fatalities... almost time to start an Official Plane Crash thread, no?



Air Canada Flight 624 crash lands in Halifax; 23 sent to hospital | Globalnews.ca

It was a frightening landing for passengers on Air Canada Flight 624 arriving in Halifax from Toronto early Sunday morning.

The plane made a hard landing as it skidded off a runway at Halifax Stanfield International Airport during a snowstorm.

Air Canada confirmed 23 passengers and crew were sent to hospital, but there were no serious injuries reported and 18 have since been released. Thirteen were sent to Capital Health-run hospitals while 10 were sent to either the IWK Health Centre in Halifax or the Colchester Regional Hospital in Truro, N.S.

AC624 had 133 passengers and five crew members on board. It’s believed the plane hit a power line and then skidded, leading to a mass power outage at the airport. A direct link between the power outage and the hard landing have not been confirmed by airport officials.

The airplane was an Airbus A320, the same type involved in the deliberate crashing of a Germanwings flight over France last week.

READ MORE: A look at the safety record of the A320

Air Canada said more of its management staff have arrived in Halifax on Sunday to help, but did not confirm how many.

Officials from the Transportation Safety Board are coming from Ottawa and expect to hold a news conference at 6 p.m.

He says the Airport Authority can’t comment on the RCMP or TSB investigation, they can only give updates on the runway conditions and airport operations.

Airport spokesman Peter Spurway said the airport was closed to all traffic after the accident.

“We don’t know if weather was a factor,” Spurway said. “Crews had been clearing snow all day.”

Passenger Gordon Murray said he was calm despite the horrific experience.

“We just hit hard and things broke up,” he said. He added he feels fortunate to be alive considering what could have been.

“Just before we hit there was a big ball of light. It hit like a hard landing and we bounced and we skidded.”

Eleven-year-old Leon Yu wasn’t sure what was happening at the time, but recalls the plane “sliding everywhere.”

“A couple minutes later they just told us to get out of the plane,” he said.

Some passengers told Global News they saw an engine fall off during the landing. “The airplane hit so hard the running gear all came off, both sets of wheels, then the engines got torn off,” passenger Randy Hall said.

“It was surreal,” Wayne Ezekial of St. Andrews, N.S., said. “It was almost like I was in a movie looking forward and my first concern was the plane was gonna start breaking apart and the second thing was it was gonna catch fire.”

Spurway says the plane was under control when it made contact with the runway. Federal investigators have been called in to probe the incident.

Power was restored to the airport overnight and operations are resuming, but significant delays are expected.

As of 10 a.m. on Sunday, the airport said there was an issue preventing airlines from updating flight schedules on its website, and passengers were being advised to call their airlines directly for the latest information.

[Durrann]

Yikes

[roastpuff]

Thank God no one died.

[hud 91gt]

Yikes, this ones a little closer to home. Thank god only minor iniuries. That power pole note is scary though.

[white rocket]

Originally Posted by punkwax

almost time to start an Official Plane Crash thread, no?

We're almost at that point. Scary stuff. I've wondered lately if plane crashes have been more frequent or if it's just more noticeable with the way social media is nowadays.

[twitchyzero]

typical AC fashion

There was a couple people, all bloodied. Everybody was able to get out, but what was worse was that they left us for an hour outside in the blowing snow. I mean, we’re all freezing and we’re looking and going, ‘Why isn’t anybody coming to get us?’" said passenger Lianne Clark.

the power line

[underscore]

That would be on the airport, not AC.

[SpartanAir]

Even though this was likely still human error, kudos to the pilot for doing what he can to keep the passengers safe.

Easy to blame him but you know those guys are trained to do everything possible to keep everyone alive when shit hits the fan...and they did.

[N.V.M.]

Nice euphemism/spin on the "hard landing" bit.

It was a crash landing, shit's gonna hit the fan here.

[Bouncing Bettys]

Originally Posted by punkwax

Fortunately, no fatalities... almost time to start an Official Plane Crash thread, no?

While so often lives are lost, plane crashes are quite interesting. Every time a crash occurs, part of me eagerly awaits to watch the Mayday/Air Crash Investigation episode which eventually gets made about a crash.

[tiger_handheld]

WTF is up with all the crashes lately? 2014 was a shitty year for planes and 2015 seems to be no different..

[Sunfighter]

So I was at the airport last night when this happened. I had an 830pm flight from Halifax to Toronto. However, we sat on the runway for hours as they kept shifting the snow off the wings, as they deiced the plane and tried to keep ice out of the engines... It was massive snow and windstorm. At around midnight they gave up and dropped us back at the gate with the intention of waiting out the store. Then all of a sudden we could hear a loud pop/explosion and ALLLL of the terminal lights went dark. At first we assumed it was storm related but Twitter quickly began indicating that it was a result of a plane coming down and hitting lines. Due to the combination of storm and the crash and most morning arrivals were cancelled. I finally got out a little before noon.

As all of the hotels were full last night and because the roads to difficult to drive they brought out mats for us all to sleep on.

I'm just happy that nobody was hurt.

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by underscore

That would be on the airport, not AC.

yes but in the original cbc article it mentioned passengers were running scared away from the plane because of fuel leaking and had implied the crew of five did not direct everybody away

possibly bad reporting

anyways I hope the 1 hour wasn't exaggerated...I understand there was a power outage and a snowstorm but I'm surprised it took the emergency crew on the ground that long to reach them

[tool001]

so plane touched down before the runway , was it due to no power to light up the runway or poor visibilty

[Sunfighter]

tool001 ... undetermined at this time.

I'll saw this though - there was a massive snow/windstorm. But these are professional pilots and with the equipment onboard I would assume they could easily compensate for the visibility.

The whole night felt like I was living Die Hard 2.