The Air Canada flight attendant miraculously survived being thrown more than 300 feet from the plane when it crashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport Sunday night because of her “robust” jump seat, according to a safety expert.
Solange Tremblay was seated in her jump seat — which is specifically designed with withstand crashes — when Flight 8646 T-boned a Port Authority fire truck en route to an emergency around 11:40 p.m.
The impact of the crash sent Tremblay flying 300 feet from the aircraft, her daughter said — but she suffered only a fractured leg.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said Tremblay escaped largely unscathed because of the special seat, which has a four-point restraint.
“The flight attendant’s seat is kind of a jump seat that folds down and is bolted to the wall, the same wall that the cockpit utilizes,” said Guzzetti.
“It’s a very robust seat,” he added. “It’s designed to withstand probably more crash loads than passenger seats because you need the flight attendant to help passengers get out of an airplane after a crash.”
Tremblay’s daughter, Sarah Lepine, told Canadian news station TVA Nouvelles what happened to her mother was a “total miracle.”
“I’m still trying to understand how all this happened,” Lepine said, “but she definitely has a guardian angel watching over her.”
“At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than 100 meters (328 feet) from the plane. They found her and she was still strapped into her seat,” she said.
With Post Wires
