‘It’s chaos here for all the wrong reasons’

IN Blarney, 10km from the airport, residents reported hearing what sounded like a plane in trouble.

Ann, who contacted local radio station 96fm, said she watched as the plane made its way toward the airport to land.

“I heard a noise, I just looked up and I thought, that sounds a bit loud and I said to my husband, what is that noise?

“My first reaction was — that plane is in trouble.

“We are up pretty high, I watched it come up out of the fog for a moment and then it went back in again,” she said.

Jim contacted the station to report from a ‘birds eye view’ at the airport car park.

“The plane actually ended up upside down. If you look at the body of the plane it almost looks like there is a bend in the airplane, the back is up high and the nose is down in the ground. There is major activity there now, between ambulances, guards and fire crews. It’s a highly controlled situation.”

Eyewitness Ian contacted 96fm after hearing the plane in trouble overhead.

“I went up myself and went into one of the fields by the runway and I got fairly close — I was about 100 yards from the scene of the accident.

“The plane was upside down, the landing gear was pointing up into the sky. the nose was either destroyed or buried in the ground, you couldn’t see it anyway. It was fairly bad up there.

“When I arrived up there it was about 20 minutes after the crash, I saw no one leaving the plane, I’d say they got most of the people out by at that stage,” he said.

Billy, a taxi driver, watched the drama from the airport car park.

“We believe its the Belfast flight, it must have left the runway because it doesn’t appear to be on the runway. It’s chaos here for all the wrong reasons.

“Hopefully it’s just damage to the plane and that’s all is it,” he said, shortly after 10am.

Malcolm arrived at Cork Airport for a flight yesterday morning.

“It was all over when we got here. We came to the gates in a taxi — we found out in the taxi it was after happening. We had to walk up from the gates with our bags.

“It’s very quiet and solemn here, people are shocked, they don’t know what to be doing. There is a lack of information, nothing is coming through,” he said.

Cllr Patricia Gosch, Fine Gael, was dropping her husband off at Cork Airport to catch a flight when she learned of the crash.

“We saw garda cars and ambulances all over the place and the road was blocked at the entrance to the airport. We saw about four ambulances passing us and we knew then it was very serious.

“We heard after that there were four or five people dead and that the Belfast flight had overshot the runway. You could see the gardaí themselves were very shocked,” she said.

Cllr Jim Daly, mayor of Cork County, said “The county is in a state of shock. When something like this happens on your doorstep it’s not something you are used to, it’s a very traumatic time.

“Our thoughts are with the families and that is where our focus is at this stage,” he said.

Bishop of Cork, Dr John Buckley, at Cork Airport yesterday morning extended his sympathies to families of the bereaved. “We offer our support, our help and indeed our prayers at this time of terrible tragedy and wish to sympathise with all who have been bereaved.”