A military-chartered passenger plane slid off a runway and into a Florida river while landing Friday night, authorities said, forcing scores of passengers onto the aircraft's wings to await rescue.
The Boeing 737, carrying 136 passengers and seven crew members from the Guantanamo Bay military station in Cuba to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, came to rest in a shallow part of the St. Johns River and was not submerged.
All people aboard survived, and firefighters helped them to safety, officials said. Twenty-one survivors were transported to hospitals in good condition, Jacksonville fire spokesman Tom Francis said.
The flight had passed through thunderstorms, a passenger told CNN. The safe landing was a miracle, said Capt. Michael Connor, a commanding officer at the Jacksonville station.
"We could be talking about a different story this evening. So, there's a lot to say about the professionalism of the folks that helped the passengers off the airplane," he said early Saturday at a news conference.
The plane was taking active-duty military members, civilian government employees and their dependents back to the US, Connor said.
"Some of them were coming back to see their families, some of them were continuing on travel to their homes outside of Florida," he said.
The plane will stay in the water until a National Transportation Safety Board team can examine the scene. NTSB investigators arrived late Saturday morning, the board said.
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