Coming home for the holidays is usually a happy occasion.

But for Victoria Tavares-Finson, it was not the joyous occasion she thought it would be. As a passenger on American Airlines Flight 331, she was caught up in the hubbub when the aircraft overshot the runway coming to a halt metres from the sea. The 18-year-old, who attends school in Boston, Massachusetts, said she thought all was going well with the flight but things changed quickly.

"I thought it was a routine landing until we hit the wall. They didn't tell us to brace or anything," she said when The Gleaner contacted her yesterday. Tavares-Finson struck her head, breaking her nose. To compound matters, luggage from the overhead compartment struck her. She also has a deep cut above her eye.

"Right now, I'm black and blue and all bandaged," she said, while still at the Andrews Memorial Hospital. She said she made her own way out of the plane but fell into what seemed like a ditch and had to crawl out. She called her father from the vehicle that had helped her get to the airport. Her father, William Tavares-Finson, said he received a call from his by-then hysterical daughter about 10:26 p.m.

"She was saying, 'Daddy, help me, help me. I'm in a plane crash'!" he recalled. He said he had been at home monitoring the arrivals because he knew the hectic travel season would cause some delays. He originally thought the plane was on its way down when she called.

"It has been very stressful. We all weren't very well for a while," he admitted. The Gleaner asked Victoria what she thought about the response of the emergency services and, like some passengers, she felt that help was slow in coming at the airport.

"They took a long time to get there. Everyone was just freaking out. Even when we got back to the airport, it was hectic. It was hard to get attention," she said. The memories of the crash have left her with more than a few qualms about flying now.

"I don't think I'll be able to get back on a plane any time soon, but that's troublesome, because I have to go back to school in January," she said.

- Daviot Kelly