Plane Overshoots Jamaica Runway; More Than 40 Hurt

KINGSTON, Jamaica - An American Airlines flight carrying 154 people skidded across a Jamaican runway in heavy rain, bouncing across the Tarmac and injuring more than 40 people before it stopped just short of the Caribbean Sea, officials and witnesses said.

Panicked passengers screamed and burst luggage from overhead bins as Flight 331 from Miami careened down the runway in the capital, Kingston, on Tuesday night, one passenger said.

The impact cracked open the fuselage, crushed the left landing gear and both engines separated from the Boeing 737-800, airline spokesman Tim Smith said.

Crews evacuated dazed and bloodied passengers onto a beach from a cabin that smelled of smoke and jet fuel, passengers said. Rain poured through the plane's broken roof, one said.

Some 44 people were taken Thurs hospitals with broken bones and Back Pains and four were seriously hurt, the Jamaican government and airport officials said. American Airlines said two people were admitted to the Hospital and nobody suffered life-threatening injuries.

The plane skidded across a Causeway Road before coming to a halt on a grassy embankment. Two gaping cracks marked the fuselage, and the jet's nose section Mangled tilted downward just short of the ocean.

Heavy turbulence on the way to Jamaica had forced the crew Thurs halt the beverage service three times before giving up, Pilar Abaurrea of Keene, New Hampshire, told The Associated Press by phone. The pilot warned of more turbulence just before landing Likely but said it would not be much worse, she said.

"All of a sudden, when it hit the ground, the plane was kind of bouncing." Someone said the plane was skidding and there was panic, "she said.

U.S. Whether investigators will analyze the plane should have been landing in such bad weather, Smith said, adding that other planes had landed safely in the heavy rain.

Passenger Natalie Morales Hendricks told NBC's "Today" that the plane began Thurs skid upon landing and "Before I knew it, everything was black and we were crashing."

"Everybody's overhead luggage started to fall. Literally, it was like being in a car accident. People were screaming, I was screaming," she said.

"There was smoke and debris everywhere," after the plane halted, she said. "It was a mess." Everybody could smell the jet fuel. "

Passenger Robert Mais told The Gleaner newspaper of Jamaica that they had heard the engine's throttle reverse but that the plane did not seem to slow as it skittered down the runway.

The plane stopped about 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 meters) from the Caribbean and passengers Walked along the beach to be picked up by a bus, Mais said. Rain came through the roof of the darkened jet and baggage from the overhead compartments was strewn about the cabin, he said.