A routine winter takeoff turned into a nerve-shredding ordeal when an American Airlines jet suddenly slid off a snowy taxiway in Rochester, New York, leaving nearly 100 passengers stranded in the freezing dark with no idea what had just happened.
Flight 3057, a Boeing 737-800 bound for Charlotte, had just finished deicing on Jan. 15 when the aircraft lurched off the pavement and became stuck in deep snow. It happened fast. It happened without warning. And it left the entire cabin in stunned silence.
“We felt a jolt, like the plane lost its footing,” said passenger Michael Turner. “Then everything went dead quiet. You could feel everyone thinking the same thing: Are we about to tip over?”
The FAA says the crew made a wide turn and rolled into a snowbank. The jet became “disabled.” It wasn’t in an area monitored by air traffic control. The investigation is now underway.
Aviation safety analysts are already calling the incident alarming.
“When a commercial jet slides off a taxiway after deicing, that is a serious systems breakdown,” said aviation expert Mark Hill. “That doesn’t happen at well-managed airfields. Something went wrong.”
Passengers say the worst part wasn’t the slide. It was the eerie lack of communication afterward.
“We were stuck. We weren’t moving. And nobody told us anything,” said traveler Sarah Lawton. “People were whispering, ‘Did we hit something? Are we safe?’ It was like being trapped in a snowstorm inside a metal tube.”
Another traveler described the moment as “the closest thing to an aviation nightmare without leaving the ground.”
Airport firefighters and operations crews swarmed the aircraft. Snow was piled nearly up to the engines. Passengers were eventually escorted off by bus, shivering as they stepped into the brutal winter air.
American Airlines insisted everyone was safe. But the apology landed weakly for some.
“You can’t just say ‘sorry’ after your plane slides off the road like a car on bald tires,” Turner said. “This is supposed to be an airline, not bumper cars.”
The city was hit with severe cold, snow, and frost that had already pushed airports to their limits. But travelers say the runway didn’t feel icy earlier in the day, leaving many to ask the same question:
If a plane can slide off a cleared taxiway, what else can go wrong?
The stuck aircraft caused airport-wide delays. Other passengers were left circling, waiting, wondering.
“When we landed, we couldn’t figure out why everything was crawling,” said fellow passenger Theresa Crawl. “Now it makes sense. A plane was literally stuck in the snow.”
American Airlines handed out hotel rooms and rebooked the group for the next morning. But for some, the damage was done.
“I’ve flown through storms. I’ve flown through turbulence,” Lawton said. “But I’ve never been on a plane that slid off the road. That’s a whole different kind of fear.”
American Airlines maintains safety is its “top priority.”
But passengers say it didn’t feel that way on the night their jet skidded into a snowbank and everything went silent.