Air Canada LaGuardia crash flight attendant was ejected 300 feet from plane

A flight attendant on board the Air Canada flight that collided with a fire truck at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport was thrown more than 300 feet from the aircraft and discovered still strapped to her seat, her daughter has disclosed.

Solange Tremblay, a Quebec woman and one of the flight attendants working on the CRJ-900 jet, operated by Jazz Aviation, was amongst the nine individuals taken to hospital with injuries following the fatal crash.

Her daughter told Quebec’s TVA News that it was a “complete miracle” that Tremblay had survived the crash. Whilst she sustained multiple injuries, including multiple bone fractures, she is reportedly not in critical condition.

“It’s a complete miracle. At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than 100 meters (328 feet) from the plane. They found her and she was still strapped into her seat,” her daughter, Sarah Lépine, said. “She had a guardian angel watching over her. It could have been much worse.”

Lépine added that her mother will undergo surgery for a broken leg as a result of the incident.

Passengers on board the flight described a chaotic scene following the impact. According to Rebecca Liquori, a nurse on the flight, the aircraft was not equipped with emergency slides, leaving them to climb out onto the wings and then jump to the ground.

“The flight attendant that was in the front, she got ejected from the plane so we really did not have direction,” Liquori said. According to NBC affiliate WNBC, Tremblay, who had been with Jazz Aviation for 26 years, was in the jump seat at the front of the plane before the crash. Jazz Aviation is an independent Canadian regional airline owned by Chorus Aviation that provides regional and charter services in Canada and the United States. It is primarily contracted by Air Canada.

A pilot and a co-pilot died as a result of the Sunday night incident. The crash occurred when an Air Canada flight collided with a firefighting vehicle on the tarmac at the major U.S. airport.

The fire engine from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was responding to a United Airlines aircraft that “reported an issue with odor” prior to the crash, said Port Authority executive director Kathryn Garcia during a news conference.

The aircraft, carrying over 70 passengers and four crew members, suffered significant damage. Garcia confirmed that everyone on board had been accounted for, adding that the sergeant and police officer who were inside the firefighting vehicle were in stable condition and were being treated in hospital “with no life-threatening injuries.

“I visited them both in the hospital, as has the chairman, and they were able to speak, and we’re notifying their families,” said Garcia. Meanwhile, all arrivals and departures from the airports were cancelled or delayed until further notice, impacting hundreds of flights run by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and Air Canada. LaGuardia resumed flights at around 2 p.m. on Monday.

A passenger on the Air Canada flight, Jack Cabot, said the flight initially seemed normal. “But as we were arriving, we came down really hard,” he told Fox News.

“We stopped really quickly, and then about two seconds later, we just had an absolute, like, slam,” he added. “Everybody was flying everywhere.”

He detailed how the Air Canada Flight 8646 began swerving left and right. “It was chaos. I didn’t feel like there was anyone in control.” Speaking to CNN, Cabot said no instructions were given to passengers.

“Somebody said, ‘Let’s get the emergency exit and get the door, and let’s all jump out,'” he said. “And that’s exactly what we did.”