Air Niugini plane crash in Micronesia: an American who was on a plane describes an accident

Investigators are trying to understand how a Boeing 737 missed the runway on a small isolated island in Micronesia and finished in the ocean.

Local fishermen brought the catch of the day when the 737 fell. A flotilla of small boats ran to help people get out of the water and bring them to shore.

"I'm alive – it's a very good thing," said Bill Jaynes, an American with 47 people on board.

"It was just surreal, I thought we had landed hard until I had a look and saw a hole in the side of the plane and that Water was coming in, "Jaynes said. "I thought, well, that's not how it goes."

The flight of Air Niugini was approaching Thursday when the airline said it had landed on the track of the island of Chuuk for a quarter of a kilometer and it descended into the waters of the Pacific lagoon that surrounds the island. On a map, there is a point in the South Pacific, known for its dives on warships of the Second World War and home to about 50,000 people.

American sailors were working on a nearby wharf, and one of them took a picture helping the survivors get ashore. Several passengers were injured – one critically – but everyone survived.

The images of the plane resting in the water and the lifeboats of the passengers recall the memories of the "Miracle on the Hudson" in 2009, where American pilots managed to land on the river after the impacts of birds had knocked out both engines.

"We were able to get out, the water was there only on me, on the plane, and we came out of the emergency doors," Jaynes said. "I was really impressed by the locals who immediately started going out on a boat.It might be thought that they might be afraid to approach the plane that just came in. ;to crush."

The airline said the weather was bad at the time of landing with heavy rain and poor visibility. Divers are working to recover the black boxes from the aircraft and the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration will assist in the investigation.