'Miraculous': 737 Pilots Walk Away From Crash

Jet converted to fight fires went down in Australia
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 7, 2023 1:30 PM CST

It's not the result you'd expect from the scene: smoke billowing from a crashed Boeing 737 jet—and not a single serious injury. In this case, the 737 that went down in Western Australia state crashed with only two pilots aboard, reports the ABC News of Australia. The jet operated by Coulson Aviation had been converted into a firefighting plane, and it was on its way to fight a blaze when it crashed Monday in Fitzgerald River National Park. (See video of the aftermath here.)

"It's nothing short of miraculous that they were able to walk away from that plane," says Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson, per the AP. The two unidentified pilots were taken from the wreck via helicopter, and both had only minor injuries. "In this particular instance, it does look as though it's potentially clipped the ridgeline and has pancaked down, so it's certainly a horizontal landing as opposed to vertically into the ground; [it] makes a big difference," says Angus Miller, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's chief commissioner, per ABC.

(More plane crash stories.)

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