Passengers escape death as plane skids off runway, falls into river

Steve Oke Chapchap Market No Comments

Boeing 737 plane arriving from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba went off the runway into the St. Johns River in Florida on Friday night, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said.

“I’ve been briefed that all lives have been accounted for,” the mayor tweeted.

The plane is in shallow water and not submerged, and everyone is alive, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office said.

The plane slid off a runway into the St. Johns River at 9:40 p.m. ET, a spokesman from the Naval Air Station Jacksonville said. It appears to have skidded off the airport runway while trying to land and ended up in the river, CNN affiliate WJXT reported.

The plane was arriving “from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into Naval Air Station Jacksonville ” and crashed into the river at the end of the runway, Naval Air Station Jacksonville.

“Navy security and emergency response personnel are on the scene and monitoring the situation,” it said.

David Soucie, a former inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, described it as a private jet charter. Curry had initially called it a commercial flight.

“The fact that they were all brought out of the aircraft safely and no one was hurt says a lot about how the crew reacted to this situation,” he said.

Curry said fire and rescue crews were on the scene. “While they work please pray,” he wrote.

President Donald Trump’s White House called to offer help as the situation was developing, the mayor said.