A U.S. Airways flight departing for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from the Philadelphia International Airport, took an ugly turn on Thursday night at around 6:05 pm when the Airbus 320 allegedly blew a tire and the captain was forced to abort takeoff. The aircraft had just gone airborne when he attempted to land, but the plane’s front landing gear collapsed upon contact with the ground, CBS reported.

The good news is that the pilot was able to bring the plane to a halt in safety, and from the 149 passengers and five crewmembers onboard Flight 1702, only one person suffered some minor injuries and has already been treated and released, according to NBC10.

One of the passengers even took a few shots, including one with the airplane down on its nose and…wait for it…a selfie, which the young woman posted on her Twitter account.

More details about the crash are slowly surfacing online, with CNN quoting an eyewitness from a nearby plane named Dave Olinger who said that he saw the Airbus “bounce”.

“I saw the plane come down with its landing gear (hitting) the ground abnormally hard and it bounced back into the air,” said Olinger. “Then it continued to try to land and it went out of my view as I saw a massive cloud of dust come up from behind it.”

A similar claim was made by another observer at the Philadelphia airport terminal, FlyerTalk member “phlwookie”, who wrote on the travel forum:

“Sitting in the A-West lounge, just watched what I think was a US A319 bounce twice on takeoff from 27L, then have front gear collapse at high speed. Can’t see where it stopped but smoke from the west end of 27L,” he said.

He later provided more details: “Here’s what I saw … at approx 6:26 pm or so, I was in the US Airways Club in Terminal A-West over gate A15, able to see roughly the eastern half of runway 27L. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a plane get 30-50 ft in the air, then come down and bounce on the runway, then be airborne for another 2-3 seconds, then land with more weight towards the front landing gear. Front gear collapsed, sparks on the runway, it then skid out of my line of sight. Light white smoke visible for about 7-10 min afterwards. Winds are still pretty strong here, but I doubt that was the primary cause. Weather otherwise clear and sunny here.”

According to an airport spokesman, most flight operations have resumed after a temporary suspension.

By John Halas

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