A Lion Air jetliner crashed on landing in Bali this morning, missing the runway and cracking in half in shallow waters. Amazingly, no one was killed in the accident.
The Boeing 737 was a domestic flight that missed the runway by about 50 meters and landed in the ocean next to the runway. Terrified passengers grabbed life jackets and made their way out of the plane, which was quickly filling up with water. The plane never became submerged, however.
The BBC Reports:
"The plane plunged into the sea at high speed," passenger Ignatius Juan Sinduk, 45, told AFP from his hospital bed in Denpasar, where he was being treated for a chest injury. "Everybody screamed and water suddenly surged into the plane. Passengers panicked and scrambled for life jackets. Some passengers fell, some ran into others, it was chaos. I managed to grab [a lifejacket] and slowly swam out of the plane and to the shore."
The plane was quickly surrounded by rescue workers in dinghies, who helped the passengers swim out of the plane. The fuselage, as you can see above, cracked in half on impact. The plane was carrying 108 passengers, with up to 45 being injured, but none seriously.
No reason has yet been identified for the airplane missing the runway, but carrier Lion Air is at the moment banned from flying to Europe due to broader safety issues in the Indonesian airline industry. It has been involved in six accidents since 2002, according to the AP.