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Firefighters sprayed foam on Piedmont Airlines Flight 4560, operating for US Airways, after it made an emergency belly landing around 1 a.m. at Newark Liberty International Airport.
((Courtesy of the Port Authority))
By Stephen Stirling and Eunice Lee/Star-Ledger Staff
It wasn’t until the captain began inspecting the side of the plane with a flashlight that Linda Demarest realized there was a problem.
The Pompton Plains resident was returning home from a business trip in Dallas late Friday night. The trip had gone smoothly, until her connecting flight from Philadelphia suddenly pulled back into the sky as it made its final descent into Newark Liberty International Airport.
It must be air traffic delays, Demarest remembers thinking to herself.
But after another hour in the air, the pilot came through the cabin, flashlight in hand, and Demarest’s thoughts turned to her family.
"At that point, we knew we were going to crash," Demarest tearfully recounted yesterday in an interview with The Star-Ledger. "I just kept thinking of my family and how much I loved them. I thought I was never going to see them again."
Demarest was among 34 people aboard the commuter plane that was forced to make an emergency belly landing at Newark airport when its left main landing gear failed to extend, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
“They did a fly-by and confirmed the gear was not down,” said Port Authority Police Sgt. Leonard Colonna, one of a 16-person crew that rescued passengers from the plane after it scraped across the runway.
Miraculously, no injuries were reported, officials said.
Piedmont Airlines Flight 4560, operating for US Airways, took off from Philadelphia at 10:52 p.m. Friday en route to Newark. The De Havilland DASH-8 100 turboprop plane landed on Runway 4L at Newark about 1 a.m. after "the pilot decided to land ... with no landing gears extended," the FAA said in a statement.
Demarest described the final minutes of the flight as horrifying.
As crew members calmly and continuously repeated safety instructions, she turned on her phone and texted her husband, 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, telling them she loved them. Around her, passengers cried and held hands.
Colonna said the plane did a few laps around Newark to burn off fuel, reducing the plane’s weight and minimizing the potential fire that could have broken out.
When the plane was just 200 feet above the ground, the captain came back over the loud speaker.
"He just kept repeating ‘Crash! Crash! Crash!’" Demarest said.
The plane touched down with a resounding thud, Demarest recalled.
"We felt that initial force of it hitting the ground. It was screeching and sliding and moving all over," as it slid down the runway, she said. "It was making sparks fly around the plane."
The cabin quickly filled with smoke but there was no fire. The Port Authority Police Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting division quickly rushed to the plane and doused it in foam as it came to a halt, officials said.
“It bounced several times at which time it came to a resting position,” Colonna said.
Then, it was over.
Within moments of the turboprop grinding to a stop, Demarest and her fellow passengers had evacuated the plane and bolted to the grass along the runway.
Now safe, they cried and clutched each other, bound by the traumatic experience.
"It was elation," she said.
Her family, who were asleep back home in Pompton Plains, hadn’t received her texts. She immediately called her husband.
"I broke down and cried...(I) told him what happened and that I loved him. (The other passengers and I) were all just grateful, thanking God and the captain."
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The emergency landing shut down the airport until just before 3 a.m. The runway was reopened at 9:24 a.m., the agency said.
Davien Anderson, a spokesman for US Airways, said the plane circled Newark in a holding pattern while the crew worked to get the landing gear down and made the emergency landing after several failed attempts.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the agency is "working with the carrier to assess the damage to the aircraft" but did not yet have details on what may have caused the landing gear malfunction.
Demarest wasn’t able to return home until after 3:30 a.m. When she did, she found her husband waiting for her.
"When I walked in the door we just held each other and cried. We were just happy to see each other again," she said.
She joked that she should purchase a lottery ticket following the harrowing experience, before correcting herself.
"Actually, I don't need to play. I already won the lottery."
Star-Ledger staff writer David Giambusso contributed to this report.
Related Coverage
• FAA says plane's left main landing gear failed, forcing emergency belly landing at Newark airport
• Landing gear issue leads to plane's belly landing at Newark airport