What could have been a really tragic accident Saturday turned out fairly well, with there being no deaths when a Caribbean Airlines jet broke in half while landing in Guyana. But according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, the accident is exactly the kind of incident that international aviation experts have been trying to curtail.
Flight 737, a Boeing with 163 people on it, had taken off from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, made a quick stop in Trinidad and then continued to Guyana. But the weather was bad there, rainy. After landing the Boeing skidded off the end of the runway in Georgetown, hit a fence and cracked into two pieces.
Passengers escaped the aircraft by going down emergency slides. It’s almost miraculous that no one was killed or badly hurt. Although “dozens” of people needed medical attention, only a handful had to be hospitalized, according to The Journal.
Air safety investigators will probe whether mechanical problems led to the Guyana crash. There is apparently some evidence that panels on the aircraft’s wings may have malfunctioned.
But the crash could turn out to be a prime example of the “runway excursion” accidents that authorities are trying to prevent. Such accidents involve crashes where planes speed off runways because of pilot errors, including landing at a high speed, or making misjudgments when they land on slippery wet or icy surfaces, according to The Journal.
The Journal cited statistics from Boeing that found that accidents from plane takeoffs and landings were responsible for nearly 1,000 deaths from 2001 to 2010.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will be taking part in the probe of the Guyana crash.
The Journal story noted that American airline companies had made changes in their operations in the wake of accidents that happened during jet landings. Perhaps the international aviation community will do the same.