Passengers cheat death as plane snaps in half in Guyana
AP
A plane carrying 163 passengers narrowly escaped disaster when it crash-landed in the South American country of Guyana - and snapped in half.
Amazingly, no one was killed and just a few people were injured after the Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737-800 from New York overshot the runway at Georgetown's Cheddi Jagan airport.
The aircraft slid along the wet runway, crashed through a chain-link fence and narrowly missed a 200-foot ravine - if it had fallen into the ravine, all the passengers and crew would almost certainly have died.
The crash happened just after midnight local time, as the flight arrived from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where it had made a stop before continuing to Georgetown.
One passenger, Adis Cambridge, of Guyana, said she felt the thump of a hard landing but didn't think much of it until seconds later.
She said: "I realised that everything was on top me, people and bags. I was the second to last person to get off that plane in the dark. I hit my head on the roof, it was so scary."
At first, authorities struggled to reach passengers due to lack of lighting and emergency equipment.
"Everything started caving in and the girl next to me just sat there motionless in shock," said another passenger, Betsy Myndyllo, who escaped with the help of her nephews and left the crash on foot in the dark, arriving at the terminal 20 minutes later.
Other passengers said that their applause at the safe landing turned to screams when they realised the plane had broken in half.
Guyana's health minister, Leslie Ramsammy, told French news agency Agence France Presse that one passenger suffered a broken leg while several others walked away with minor bruises. Around 100 required medical attention and four were hospitalised with serious injuries.
Caribbean Airlines don't yet know the cause of the accident but chairman George Nicholas said: "It's an absolute miracle what happened here in Georgetown."
Guyanese President Bharrat Jagedo said: "We are very, very thankful and grateful that there are no deaths."
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