J. Paul Morgan, former director general of the Office of Utilities Regulation. - File

Former Director General of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) J. Paul Morgan and his wife, Janice, are among the scores of people happy to be alive after the aircraft on which they were travelling from Miami, Florida, on Tuesday overshot the runway at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston.

The two, who crawled from the plane to safety, are now nursing minor injuries sustained in the accident.

Struggling to find words to explain his narrow escape from death, Morgan said the experience was one of the most difficult things for him to describe.

"Life looks good, when you go through an experience like this. Then you realise that you have to be thankful for it," he told The Gleaner yesterday.

Morgan said that, though he did not have the expertise to determine the cause of the accident, it felt like the plane came down late as it attempted to land.

Bumpy trip

The former head of the local utilities regulator said the trip was bumpy, due to the poor weather conditions.

Morgan was among several passengers who looked past their own injuries to assist other passengers in exiting the aircraft.

Janice Morgan, who praised her husband for the bravery he displayed, said though she was initially frightened by his actions, she was now proud of him.

"We were the first persons to get off the plane. My husband was able to open the left emergency door and was on his feet assisting the passengers, while I was there crying out to him, asking if he was ok," she said.

She said she got concerned when she saw that the plane was not slowing down, but before long she heard an explosion so she had no time to even give thought to the moment.

"It was the worst experience in my life. At one point, I thought the plane would blow up because the fuel smell was so strong," she added.

Mrs Morgan also noted that officers on duty at the Airport Police Station, where the passengers were rushed to, showed no sign that they knew what was happening, as they did not attend quickly to the passengers who were at the location for a while.

She, however, praised the medical team, saying it did an excellent job.

The two were among several persons who were taken to the University Hospital of the West Indies, where they were treated and released.

Not the first time

Tuesday night's incident at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston was not the first such potentially fatal accident to take place on Jamaican soil.The following are three other incidents which have occurred over the past 58 years.

September 2, 1951: Twenty-nine passengers and a crew of four in flight from Miami crashed into the sea at Palisadoes Airport during a rain squall, about 200 yards from the tip of the runway on which it should have landed. There was no loss of life.

April 10, 1953: Shortly after 9:30 a.m., a Caribbean International Airways (a local company plane) flight on its first scheduled trip to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, crashed into the sea off Palisadoes Airport within minutes of take-off, killing 10 passengers and three crew: five men, five women and three children.

Friday, January 21, 1960: Thirty-seven people, one of them a child, died in a similar incident in a flaming horror at the Montego Bay Airport, as a big Avianca Airlines HK177 Super Constellation crashed and exploded on the runway. A total of nine persons survived the ordeal.