Delta Jetliner Slid Off Runway at LaGuardia

NEW YORK (AP) -- A Delta plane from Atlanta skidded off a LaGuardia Airport runway while landing during a snowstorm on Thursday and crashed through a chain-link fence, its nose coming to rest perilously close to the icy waters of a bay.

The nose was leaning on a berm that separates the runway from Flushing Bay. Passengers saddled with bags and bundled up in heavy coats and scarves were helped down from a wing and onto the snowy pavement, just feet from the water. Everyone was silent as the plane slid, but some children started crying after it came to a stop, passengers said.

"If we wouldn't have hit the snowbank, we'd be in the water right now," said Charles Runels, a passenger from Atlanta.

Flight 1086, carrying 125 passengers and five crew members, veered off the runway at around 11:10 a.m., authorities said. Six people had non-life-threatening injuries, and at least two were taken to the hospital, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

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."

Passengers trudged through the snow in an orderly line after climbing off the plane.

LaGuardia is one of the most congested airports in the United States, and its two runways are shorter than those at most other major airports.

Former US Airways pilot John M. Cox, who's now CEO of consultancy Safety Operating Systems, said LaGuardia's main runway is "reasonably short" but safe.

At airports with longer runways, pilots will glide a few feet above the runway and gently touch down. At LaGuardia, he said, "you put the airplane on the ground and stop it."

The runway where the Delta flight landed was plowed and two other pilots reported good braking conditions minutes before the Delta plane landed, said Patrick Foye, the Port Authority's executive director.

Foye said the Delta pilot did everything he could to slow the aircraft. Both runways closed after the crash, but one reopened at 2 p.m.

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