Jet Overshoots Runway But 145 Survive Crash

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30411, 9 April 1964, Page 15

Jet Overshoots Runway But 145 Survive Crash

(N Z P A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, April 8. A Pan American jet airliner with 145 persons aboard landing in dense fog at Kennedy Airport last night hurtled off the end of a runway into a ditch, but no-one was killed or seriously hurt The airliner, flying in from San Juan, Puerto Rico, had been diverted to Dulles Airport in Baltimore to pick up passengers and it arrived at Kennedy Airport shortly after 11 p.m. It made an instrument approach on the foul-weather runway but overshot and hurtled into a 200-foot wide water-filled ditch, finishing 1000 feet from the end of the runway. The impact split the plane’s nose and twisted it. Water from the Bft deep ditch i rushed into the cabin and

caused some panic. On board were 136 passengers and nine crew.

But passengers said the stewardesses and crew helped calm down shocked passengers, most of them Puerto Ricans, and lower escape hatches. Some managed to scramble through mud to high ground, others clambered into life rafts. Broken Leg

Rescue crews found most of the passengers, many of them covered with mud, huddled by the airport boundary fence near the ditch. A number of children were weeping. Police brought up buses and carried the passengers to the airport medical centre for treatment and a clean up.

Police later reported that about 20 persons had had to be treated. The worst injury appeared to be a broken leg. .