Passenger gives account of Halifax crash landing

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HALIFAX (NEWS1130) – Federal investigators are spending the day going over the wreckage of the Air Canada flight that came in hard and crash landed in Halifax over the weekend, as we get a better idea of what the passengers went through in the minutes leading up to and during the impact.

Sarah Dijkema and her husband Steve were on the last leg of their journey back from Indonesia aboard Air Canada flight 624 when the landing gear was ripped off the plane flying into Halifax Stanfield International Airport during a snowstorm.

“It was pretty surreal,” she tells 92.9 Jack FM in Halifax. “We were coming in for a landing — we were supposed to land at midnight — and the pilot said the weather was bad so we were just going to go into a holding pattern and we would be able to circle for an hour before having to abort and go to Moncton to refuel.”

Dijkema says the plane was in that holding pattern for about 20 minutes before the captain came back on to say the visibility had cleared to a half mile, the bare minimum needed to safely land.

“I thought it was just a fly-by to see if the conditions were okay to land … but we just landed. Or we didn’t really land, I guess. We crash-landed.”

Dijkema says it was her husband who noticed the flash outside the plane’s windows as it appeared to strike an airport antenna array.

“There were a lot of sparks and you could see it on the left side of the plane … it was just like a big huge sound and I guess that was probably the landing gear that was getting broken off. Within a few seconds there was a huge impact as the plane hit and everyone in the plane — it was almost like slow motion — got slammed forward and slammed back again,” she explains.

That’s when the cabin lights went out and the oxygen masks dropped down.

“Everyone was scared and people were screaming a bit. It was just a lot of chaos. And then we launched back into the air after the initial impact. We were in the air for a few more seconds before we hit again for the second time and skidded to a stop eventually down the runway.”

Dijkema says despite the panic, everyone made it to the emergency exits, down the chutes and off the plane very quickly.

“I don’t really remember getting my seatbelt off, but the minute the plane stopped, everyone was out of their seats and running to the exits.”

TSB investigators say it is lucky that all 133 passengers and eight crew on the flight are alive today.

“It could have gone very differently, that’s for sure. Thinking back, I’m surprised that people weren’t more hurt than they actually were,” says Dijkema.

About two dozen people were hurt, but none seriously. All but one were treated and quickly released from a local hospital.

Transportation Safety Board investigators are examining wreckage and gathering evidence that will help them pinpoint the cause of the Air Canada crash.

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