Plane chartered by US military arriving from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with 143 onboard when it slid into St Johns river

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

US federal investigators on Saturday began searching for what caused a Boeing jetliner with 143 people on board to slide off a runway into a shallow river while landing at a Jacksonville, Florida military base during a thunderstorm, injuring 21 people.

The Boeing 737-800 chartered by the US military was arriving from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with 136 passengers and seven crew members when it slid into the St Johns river at the end of the runway at Jacksonville’s naval air station on Friday night, authorities said.

No one was badly hurt and the 21 people taken to a hospital were listed in good condition, the local sheriff’s office said.

Passengers escape after plane skids off runway into river in Jacksonville Read more

The National Transportation Safety Board posted a photograph on Twitter on Saturday showing NTSB investigator Dan Boggs holding an orange flight data recorder recovered from the aircraft.

Earlier, the agency said 16 investigators were arriving in Jacksonville.

The plane, chartered from Miami Air International, was attempting to land at about 9.40pm local time amid thunder and lightning when it slid off the runway and came to rest in the shallow water of the river, authorities and passengers said.

“It is a miracle. We could be talking about a different story,” Capt Michael Connor, commanding officer at the Jacksonville station, said at a news.

“There’s a lot to say about the professionalism of the folks that helped the passengers off the airplane ... because it could have very well been worse.”

Active-duty military members, civilian government employees and their dependents were on the jetliner, Connor told CNN.

The military base is on the western bank of the St Johns River about 8 miles (12.87km) south of central Jacksonville, about 350 miles (563.27 km) north of Miami.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest National Transportation Safety Board investigator Dan Boggs holds the flight data recorder recovered from the Miami Air International Boeing 737-800 that overran the runway at Jacksonville. Photograph: Reuters

Miami Air International is a charter airline operating a fleet of the Boeing 737-800, different from the 737 Max 8 aircraft that has been grounded following two fatal crashes involving that plane.

Representatives of the airline did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Boeing said the company was aware of the incident and was gathering information.

The charter company is contracted by the military for its twice-weekly “rotator” roundtrip service between the US mainland and Guantanamo Bay, said Bill Dougherty, a spokesman for the Jacksonville base.

It flies every Tuesday and Friday from the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia to the Jacksonville air station and on to Cuba. It then flies back to Virginia with a stop again at Jacksonville, Dougherty said.