Passenger Plane Involved in an Accident at Cleveland International Airport

A very scary incident happened today as a passenger jet carrying 70 passengers was flying in from Atlanta and attempting to make a landing at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. As the plane touched down it slid off the runway and smashed through a fence.

Shuttle America Flight 6448 had taken off from Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport earlier in the day and was scheduled to land in Cleveland at 3:14 p.m. When the plane finally touched down on Runway 28 it skidded and lost control.

Fortunately none of the 70 passengers and four crew members were seriously injured although 3 of the passengers were sent to a local hospital as a precaution.

For reasons unknown as of yet, the plane slipped off the end of the runway, taking out a localizer antenna array used for that landing strip, and then crashed through a fence line before finally coming to a stop. The antenna array that was damaged by the accident is used to help aircraft align with the center of the runway.

Shuttle America spokesman Warren Wilkinson said that when the plane finally came to a stop it ended up around 150 feet past the end of the runway. The engines were partially buried in the snow and the tip of the plane's nose was resting on a roadway that the airport uses to access to all of the perimeter buildings.

Even though the conditions on the runway were listed as fair at the time of the accident, a heavy snow was falling, and winds of 21 mph were measured at the airport Warren said, also another plane had just landed on the same runway about 8 minutes prior to the accident and didn't appear to have any difficulty at all.

Airport spokesperson Pat Smith said that the cause of the accident was not yet known. However the National Transportation Safety Board was on the site immediately to investigate the incident.

National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Leins said that Visibility was reduced to about a quarter to half-mile because of the snow.

After the incident occurred all flights into and out of the Cleveland International Airport were immediately stopped for more than an hour and all other traffic was diverted to other cities. Runway 28 was also shut down indefinitely pending an investigation.

A bus transported the passengers to the airport's terminal and arrangements were made for the jet to be towed to a hangar.

Sources: CNN, FOX News