A passenger sitting in the first row of the Delta plane that skidded off the runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport during landing on Thursday said she knew something was wrong as soon as the plane made contact with the runway and she couldn’t feel the brakes take hold.
“It started to really shake and bump and oxygen masks were falling and it’s at that moment your mind starts going, ‘this is really not the way it’s supposed to happen,’” Jaime Primark Sullivan, star of the Bravo reality show "Jersey Belle,” told NBC’s “Today” show on Friday.
The jet with 127 passengers on board crashed into a fence during snowy conditions, resting on an embankment just a few feet from the icy waters of Flushing Bay. About two dozen people reported minor injuries and three were taken to the hospital, officials said.
Primark Sullivan, who’s a frequent flyer and feels safe on planes, said as the jet "was sliding for thousands of feet" she was terrified it might slam into another jet or the airport. Once it stopped she saw the rocks and the water.
“It’s at that moment that you think what happens if the plane goes into the water? Do planes sink? Do they float?” Primark Sullivan said, her voice breaking. “Will I ever see my kids again?”
The plane smashed through the fence and passengers had to climb out onto a wing to exit the plane to safety.
“The pilots did everything they could but it’s not different than a car losing control on ice, except we were going hundreds of miles an hour,” Primark Sullivan said.
Primark Sullivan said she held her emotions together until she saw the pilot walk out of the cockpit.
“I looked right at him, and he looked right at me and I sort of came unglued at that moment,” she said. “His only concern was for his passengers. He walked right up to me and put his arm around me and said I’m going to get you off this plane. And he did. "