The horrifying crash involving a passenger plane and a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia Airport late on Sunday, that tragically claimed the lives of two pilots, miraculously saw dozens of people walk away mostly unscathed.
Apart from the pilot, Antoine Forest, and his co-pilot, Mackenzie Gunther, 72 passengers survived the terrifying 100mph impact at the major regional travel hub, with 41 of them hospitalized in the aftermath.
The crash unfolded at around 11.40pm on Sunday night as the Bombardier CRJ-900 flight from Montreal plowed into a New York Port Authority fire truck, which was receiving urgent instructions from air traffic control to clear the runway.
After impact, passengers described having been thrown around the cabin by the force of the jolt and being left to figure out the emergency exits for themselves. That was because, somehow, the flight attendant had been ejected from the plane - flying around 300ft across the tarmac while still strapped to her chair.
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Despite being thrown at high speed from an aircraft as it smashed into a stationary object, the only injury suffered by flight attendant Solange Tremblay was a fractured leg.
The exact mechanics of her improbable survival are not immediately obvious, but an aviation expert has pointed to one key factor that kept Tremblay alive despite the massive force of impact - her seat.
Former federal plane crash investigator, Jeff Guzzetti, told the New York Post that the foldable 'jump seat' that flight attendants sit in during takeoff and landing probably saved the Air Canada employee's life.
He explained: “The flight attendant’s seat is kind of a jump seat that folds down and is bolted to the wall, the same wall that the cockpit utilizes.” The seat also has a four-point harness to better secure its occupant.
Guzzetti described this foldable seat as 'very robust' and explained: “It’s designed to withstand probably more crash loads than passenger seats because you need the flight attendant to help passengers get out of an airplane after a crash.”
But while this explains how Tremblay and her seat survived the impact, the mystery of how her seat was thrown close to 330ft from the wreckage with her only sustaining a leg fracture continues.
Tremblay's daughter told Canadian outlets that her mom's survival was nothing short of a 'total miracle', adding: “I’m still trying to understand how all this happened. But she definitely has a guardian angel watching over her.”
A nurse who was on board the plane when it smashed into a fire truck spoke to the New York Times about how the lack of a flight attendant had left the terrified passengers without direction in the moments after the crash.
35-year-old Rebecca Liquorim who was sat in seat 19A, told the publication: “Unfortunately the flight attendant that was in the front, she got ejected from the plane so we really did not have direction. I did what I was instructed at the beginning of the flight.”
Passengers quickly opened the doors themselves, disembarking onto a wing of the downed plane before dropping to the ground.
The exact cause of the crash is still being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.
William Morgan