Aviation officials investigate plane crash on Port Royal Road

Representatives of the Airports Authority of Jamaica (AAJ) the Civil Aviation Authority, and the Norman Manley International Airport (NMIA) are investigating the cause of Friday morning's crash in the vicinity of the airport.

The crash occurred near the same location where an American Airlines plane crashed more than a year ago.

An instructor and a student pilot escaped injuries after their Cessna single engine aircraft, overshot the runway and crashed shortly after 10 o'clock.

Director-General of the Civil Aviation Authority, Lieutenant Colonel Oscar Derby said the crew was lucky that the plane was moving at a reduced speed.

“The aircraft was taking off from Norman Manley Airport going towards the east. Problems seemed to have developed on take off from the skid marks and markings on the aircraft it appears that the aircraft was attempting to stop, it did not. It came off the runway and onto the bank on the eastern side of Port Royal Road but fortunately it was going at a sufficiently slow speed to have been survivable,” Colonel Derby said.

There was a small scare for a few minutes after gasoline, which had spilled onto the road, permeated the air.

The plane blocked the Port Royal main road for several hours preventing vehicular access to and from the town.

It was re-opened shortly after one o'clock, after an inspection team from the Civil Aviation Authority indicated that it was safe to remove the aircraft.

The plane went down a short distance from where an American Airlines aircraft crashed in December 2009.

In providing an update on the status of that investigation, Colonel Derby said the location of the two incidents was a matter of coincidence.

“Well as we told you about two months ago on the anniversary [of the AA crash] that we are still conducting that investigation, we were at the halfway point then and we are confident that it will be completed by the end of this year,”

“Where it lands after overshooting the runway is simply a matter of the physics of the accident, how fast the aircraft was going and how much gap it will cover at that speed versus the vertical drop based on gravity,” he said.