TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AFP) — At least six Americans were injured Tuesday when a plane crashed while landing at the Honduran capital’s international airport and split in two.
The commercial jet from Austin, Texas left the runway and veered into a ditch, Carlos Cordero, deputy head of Honduras’s disaster relief agency Copeco told local media.
Firefighters arrived at Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa and used foam to extinguish flames coming from the wreckage.
Local businessman Pedro Atala said he and his employees had helped put out the flames with fire extinguishers, and that he had helped five men and a woman, all of whom were “practically unharmed.”
“Miraculously” the accident hadn’t been worse, he added.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez said on Twitter that all of the wounded were in a stable condition.
Surrounded by mountains and with a very short runway, the Toncontin airport is considered one of the world’s most treacherous.
In May 2008 a Taca Airlines plane skidded off the runway and crashed into a building, leaving five people dead.
The government is constructing a new international airport about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the capital, near the Palmerola military air base.
© Agence France-Presse