Delta plane skates off runway in snow-shuttered NYC, but all safe

A Delta flight from Atlanta rests on a berm near the water Thursday at LaGuardia Airport in New York after veering off the snowy runway.
A Delta flight from Atlanta rests on a berm near the water Thursday at LaGuardia Airport in New York after veering off the snowy runway.

NEW YORK -- A Delta Air Lines Inc. plane skidded off a LaGuardia Airport runway Thursday as ice and windblown snow shut businesses and government offices from New York to Washington.

The MD-88, which carried 125 passengers and five crew members from Atlanta, was evacuated after the 11 a.m. incident, according to Delta. Television images showed passengers piling into the swirling snow as the aircraft's nose sat lodged in a fence, hanging over Flushing Bay. The airport was closed until about 2 p.m.

"I'm blessed to be safe and sound," Larry Donnell, a New York Giants football player who was on board, said in a statement. "We were all shocked and alarmed when the plane started to skid, but most importantly, as far as I know, all of the passengers and flight crew were able to exit the plane safely."

Paramedics treated 24 passengers at the scene and three were taken to a hospital for injuries that weren't life-threatening, said Danny Glover, a spokesman for the Fire Department.

The storm, which was predicted to hit the city with as much as 8 inches of snow, was the third in four days for the New York area. It blanketed the Northeast on Thursday after zipping across much of the South, leaving hundreds of drivers stranded on highways in Kentucky and thousands without power in West Virginia.

Emergency management officials said the storm claimed three lives in traffic accidents in Tennessee.

In New York, Thursday's snowfall was expected to push the city's total for the season to about 40 inches, 60 percent more than normal, WeatherBell Analytics chief forecaster Joe D'Aleo said. As much as 12 inches were forecast to fall on some areas outside New York City.

Commerce slowed in Manhattan as the damp flakes poured down on a bundled and sodden populace.

"Not a lot of people are coming today," said Naser Khalil, 45, a coffee and breakfast street vendor on 55th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. He had a surplus of rolls and bagels in his cart. "I've been here 10 years, and I've never seen such a bad winter."

Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates LaGuardia, said at a news conference that the runway had been plowed minutes before the accident and that no other pilots reported problems stopping their aircraft.

Runway 13, which is 7,000 feet long, runs toward the southeast and, if a plane goes too far, it will end up in the water. The far end is equipped with a crushable foam layer designed to stop planes from going off the pavement, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The devices are designed to provide a last-ditch braking mechanism for planes on runways without the required 1,000-foot safety zone off the end.

Malcolm Duckett, a marketing executive from Georgia, said passengers were told they had to exit over the wing because the rear door was too close to the water. Duckett, who was seated near the left wing, climbed onto the right wing and then slid along it until firefighters helped him down.

"We landed pretty hard. I could see the damage to the wing. It was pretty torn up," he said. "It was riding across a fence for 10 seconds, and once we landed, we landed in the snow."

The aircraft was leaking a gallon of fuel a minute after the crash, but the leak later was stopped, Foye said .

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending an investigator to secure the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders and to document damage to the plane.

"I don't understand how the Port Authority and the Federal Aviation Administration allowed this to happen," said state Sen. Jose Peralta, a Democrat whose Queens district includes the airport. "Both agencies need to give an answer as to why the plane had permission to land during today's terrible snowy and icy conditions."

Across the U.S., 4,272 flights for Thursday were canceled as of 2:48 p.m. New York time, according to FlightAware, a tracking service.

By midday, the strong cold front moving across the eastern U.S. had dumped more than 20 inches of snow on parts of Kentucky, leaving hundreds of people stranded on two major highways. National Guard members were delivering them food or driving them to warming centers.

Officials said more than 400 vehicles became stuck along Interstate 24 between the western Kentucky towns of Cadiz and Eddyville. Gov. Steve Beshear said that 200 were still stuck by midday Thursday. There was an even larger pileup involving some 200 tractor-trailers on Interstate 65 near Elizabethtown in central Kentucky.

In western Maryland, a tractor-trailer carrying 93 head of cattle overturned Thursday on Interstate 81, which was already snarled by other accidents in the Hagerstown area.

The storm also knocked out power to 85,000 homes and businesses in West Virginia. The northern and western parts of the state were hardest hit. Officials warned that restoring power could be difficult because of road closures from high water in many spots.

Schools, government offices and legislatures in the South and Northeast were shut down for what could be one of the last snow days of a winter that's been brutal on much of the country.

The National Weather Service had winter-storm warnings in effect from Texas to Nantucket, Mass., and the forecast called for record cold conditions in the same area today. Temperatures are forecast to rise over the weekend.

Information for this article was contributed by Henry Goldman, Katherine Chiglinsky, Isis Almeida, Antonia Massa, Martin Z. Braun, Brian K. Sullivan and Alan Levin of Bloomberg News and by Meghan Barr, Scott Mayerowitz, Mark Kennedy, Karen Matthews, Barry Bedlan, Joe Frederick, Mike Balsamo, Sean Carlin, Geoff Mulvihill, Jeff Amy, Jessica Gresko, Laurie Kellman and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/06/2015

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