Passenger jet skids into Florida river; no serious injuries reported

Miami — An airplane carrying 143 people - 136 passengers and seven crew members - skidded off the runway at a military airport in Jacksonville, Florida, and into the St. Johns River, the county sheriff’s office said.

The chartered Boeing 737, a plane operated by the Miami Air International airline that took off from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ended up in shallow water and was not submerged in the river, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said Friday night on Twitter.

“Every person is alive and accounted for,” it added.

The Naval Air Station Jacksonville, the military airport where the plane touched down, said in a statement that minor injuries were reported and treated at the scene.

A total of 21 adults were transferred to local hospitals by the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department, the sheriff’s office said, adding that they are all listed in good condition and no one suffered critical injuries.

Clean-up crews are trying to control the leaking of fuel into the river following the incident, which occurred at around 9.40 pm Friday and triggered a response effort involving around 80 firefighters and rescue personnel.

The plane is owned by Miami Air International, a Miami-based airline that operates charter flights from the United States’ Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to naval air stations in Jacksonville and Norfolk, Virginia.

Passengers on those flights are normally members of the US Army, their family members and personages.

“We could be talking about a different story this evening,” Capt. Michael Connor, the commanding officer at the air base, said in a press conference. “So there’s a lot to say about the professionalism of the folks that helped the passengers off the airplane.”

He said it was a “miracle” that the crash landing did not result in any fatalities.

Days ago, meteorologists reported a light “tropical disturbance” that was to bring powerful thunderstorms to Florida.

On Saturday morning, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office tweeted that a National Transportation Safety Board team of 16 people was arriving in that Florida city to investigate Friday night’s “runway excursion” of a 737-800.

A few hours prior to the crash landing, the annual Welcome to Rockville festival in Jacksonville had to be postponed because of thunderstorms.

The festival tweeted that the venue had be evacuated “due to severe weather approaching the festival.”