An Air Canada jet skidded off a runway while landing at Halifax airport in Nova Scotia, Canada, early Sunday, causing injuries to about two dozen people on board. The airport says 25 passengers on the flight from Toronto went to the hospital. AP
An Air Canada plane skidded off the runway at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia, injuring 23 people on board, the airline said Sunday.
There were 133 passengers and five crewmembers aboard the Airbus A320. All left the plane after the incident, it said. The airport said none of the injuries were life-threatening. Eighteen were later released, Air Canada said.
Peter Spurway, a spokesman for the airport, said the plane "took a very hard landing and skidded off the runway," CBC News reported. Heavy snow was reported in the area at the time of the accident, at approximately 12:43 a.m. local time (11:43 p.m. ET)
"Right now, we have some minor injuries. Nothing that is deemed to be life-threatening," Spurway said, according to CBC.
Power at the airport was briefly knocked out and Nova Scotia Power said they had restored it. The cause of the outage was not clear. Spurway said he was not sure if the two incidents are connected.
Passengers told the Associated Press they believe the aircraft hit a power line as it came in to land and described the plane skidding on its belly for some time. Passengers also said they evacuated the plane -- and were left standing on the tarmac, some in their stocking feet, for more than an hour in a brutal snowstorm before buses arrived.
Spurway said the incident was technically not a crash because the plane, which had departed Toronto, is believed to have been under control when it came into the airfield. He added that there is no indication what caused the hard landing.
Greg Wright, waiting for his 13-year-old son, who was a passenger on the plane, told CBC he thought his son was joking when he called from the aircraft.
Wright said: "He said, 'We crashed, we crashed.' I said, 'Where are you?' He said, 'I'm on the runway.' I was panicked."
The airport said operations resumed early Sunday. Federal investigators were investigating the crash.
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