Passengers aboard the Philadelphia-T.F. Green Airport flight to Providence, R.I. got a bumpy landing as the US Airways Express broke through heavy clouds last Sunday at 300 feet, slamming into the runway veering 90 degrees and skidding off the runway. Flight 3758, an Air Wisconsin Bombardier CRJ 200, was flying through the Nor’easter that hit the East Coast over the weekend with extremely high winds, snow and freezing rain. One passenger said as it broke through, it was perpendicular to the runway. “I can’t tell you the force when we hit the ground,” the passenger told the Providence Journal. “It felt like we were in an elevator and dropped four floors.”
The pilot tried hard to keep the aircraft on the runway, he said, as the aircraft scrapped its left wing and belly. The left main gear collapsed, a wheel was ripped off and the left wing was damaged as the aircraft spun 90 degrees off runway 5/23 which was closed until the next afternoon. Emergency vehicles responded after the aircraft slid off the runway as did the National Transportation Safety Board which is investigating. No injuries were reported to firefighters at the scene. The National Weather Service reported cloud cover at 300 feet, a-mile-and-a-half-in-fog visibility, with winds at six miles per hour from the north. The aircraft touched down about 1,000 to 1,200 feet from the threshold of the 7,166-foot runway. Its recorders were sent to Washington and the NTSB has requested maintenance records.