A U.S. Navy plane with nine crew aboard overshot a runway Monday at a military base in Hawaii and ended up in the shallow waters of Kaneohe Bay. No injuries have been reported, authorities said.
UPI reports the P-8A Poseidon multi-mission aircraft came to grief around 1:57 p.m. The plane was seen sitting upright off Marine Corps Base Hawaii on the island of Oahu.
“All nine passengers aboard the aircraft at the time of the incident are accounted for, and no injuries are reported,” base spokesman Marine Maj. Jordan Fox said.
Images posted on Hawaii News Now show the white airplane surrounded by water some 50 yards offshore. The bay’s depth in that area ranges from 5 to 25 feet, according to nautical charts. Sand, mud and coral cover much of the bottom of the picturesque bay.
The Navy’s P-8A Poseidon aircraft is a surveillance jet with the airframe of a Boeing 737 passenger plane, according to Marine Corps spokesperson 1st Lt. Hailey Harms.
The crew, assigned to Whidbey Island in Washington, was performing “routine training” at the time of the crash which is still under investigation, the UPI report sets out.
File/ A Boeing P-8A Poseidon, multi-mission maritime aircraft, with the U.S. Navy Patrol Squadron Eight (VP-8) flies near Naval Air Facility in Kanagawa, Japan. (Damon Coulter/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
According to aircraft expert Peter Forman, the runway at Kaneohe is shorter than most, while windy weather and poor visibility may have played a role.
“The pilot probably didn’t put the plane down exactly where he wanted to on the runway,” Forman told UPI. “It’s probably a combination of all those factors put together.”
A photo taken by witness Diane Dircks and seen by AP showed the plane in water just offshore, a sight reminiscent of the 2009 Miracle on the Hudson when a passenger jet piloted by Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger made an emergency landing on the New York river. All 155 people aboard survived.
The P-8A is often used to hunt for submarines and for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering.
