Summary
A flight attendant who was thrown from an Air Canada plane during a collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport survived, her daughter said Monday, describing the outcome as extraordinary despite injuries that will require surgery.
Sarah Lepine said Solange Tremblay had multiple fractures to one leg and would need surgery but otherwise was OK, according to a report carried by Canadian news outlet TVA Nouvelles. Lepine also said she was still trying to understand how the collision led to her mother being thrown from the aircraft while she remained in her seat.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said Tremblay’s survival was a “miracle” in comparison with the destruction of the airplane’s nose, and he pointed to the kind of seat used for crew members. Guzzetti described the flight attendant’s seat as a jump seat that folds down and is bolted to the wall, adding that it is in the same wall area used by the cockpit.
Guzzetti said the seat is designed to be robust and to withstand crash loads beyond those expected for passenger seats because flight attendants need to help passengers exit after an accident. He said those structural features and restraints likely played a role in Tremblay’s survival.
The incident happened Sunday night when the Air Canada jet, carrying more than 70 passengers, was landing and collided with a fire truck that was responding to a problem at another plane, the Associated Press reported. The collision destroyed the nose of the Air Canada plane, and the pilot and copilot were killed.
In a comparison that highlighted how flight attendants can be affected during landing collisions, the Associated Press story noted that in 2013, at least two flight attendants were injured when they were thrown from an Asiana Airlines flight that crashed into a sea wall while landing at San Francisco International Airport.