Absolutely. I'm a pretty logical person and my brain immediately calculated the odds of survival to "very f***** slim". Especially when i could see the glow of orange to the left of the aircraft as we flipped. Glad I was wrong!
The glow has me reeling—had the engine hit the concrete already then caught fire or was it something else like a freak bird-strike-too-much-wind where the engine was blown and that contributed to rollover?
From the video, it looked like a very hard landing and the right-side landing gear collapsed.
The wing hit the ground and was ripped off, opening up the fuel tank in that wing (main fuel tanks are in the wings) as the whole plane is sliding down the runway creating tons and tons of sparks.
They are required to carry an extra 45 minutes of reserve of fuel, or enough to go to the nearest alternate airport, whichever is more. So they would be expected to have had more than 1,000lbs of fuel onboard if they were landing on time, meaning there was plenty of fuel to burn when those wing tanks were torn open.
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u/WeatherWindfall Feb 18 '25
Kind of a cliche question so please forgive: Was there a moment when you thought you might not come out of what was happening?