Vancouver couple recounts bumpy landing with Flair Airlines plane at Ontario airport
Vancouver couple Charissa Landicho and Mac Bradley just wanted a quick and cheap getaway, but a turbulent landing was not on their itinerary.
"I was definitely in shock because it was an overnight flight. I woke up, just, 'What's going on?'" Landicho said.
"We touched down and we could hear a loud thud. And it lifted up and it (went) down again," she recalled.
It was a frightening experience for the 134 passengers on the Flair Airlines Boeing 737, which went off the runway just before 6:30 a.m. Friday morning in southern Ontario.
The flight from Vancouver was landing at the Kitchener-Waterloo airport when it overshot the runway and ended up in the grass.
"To me, it felt like we pulled right and then next thing you know, we're off the tarmac, in the field pretty much, bouncing around, smacking around," said Bradley.
"We probably went like 50 to 100 metres off the runway," he continued.
He said their plane tickets cost about $100 each, roundtrip, potentially saving them hundreds by going with the budget airline.
With no announcement or warning, the couple said they were only told to stay put and waited an hour to finally get off the plane.
"It was a little bit questionable because it seemed like nobody really knew what to do on the plane other than just trying to keep calm. So that was a little bit unnerving," said Bradley.
"And the fact that we just got an automated text after asking us to leave a Google review on our experience was a little satirical," he added.
In a statement, Flair Airlines said there were no reported injuries and passengers were taken to the terminal by bus.
There is no word on what caused the aircraft to overshoot the runway, but the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) has been deployed to investigate.
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