SkyLease freighter skids off runway in Halifax, injuring 4 [VIDEO]

A 747-400 freighter, operated by Miami-based SkyLease Cargo, skidded off the runway while landing at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (YHZ) in the early morning hours of Nov. 7. The four crewmembers aboard the widebody all suffered minor injuries and were taken to a local hospital and are expected to recover.

The aircraft (N908AR) came to a rest on a patch of grass about 200 meters beyond the end of the 2,347-meter-long Runway 14/32, close to the airport’s perimeter fence, according to data from Flightradar24. The 747-400F was heavily damaged in the incident, with completely collapsed landing gear, two sheared-off engines and at least one of the remaining two engines destroyed. The fuselage was also bent and cracked open from the impact, according to this CBC News report.

This YouTube video from HRMTrafficker shows what the freighter looked like when it came to rest after the overshoot:

Within hours, investigators from the Transportation Safety Board were on the scene and reviewing the 21-year-old aircraft’s condition, the data from its flight data recorder and its maintenance history at SkyLease Cargo. Local weather reports said that, at the time of the landing, shortly after 5 a.m., some light rain was falling with only some patchy fog in the area. However, no cause for the runway overshoot has yet been determined.

Flight GG-4854 was scheduled to arrive from Chicago O’Hare this morning at YHZ to pick up a shipment of fresh lobsters, bound for Changsha, China, Since August, SklyLease had been operating twice-weekly flights carrying up to 120 tonnes of lobsters from YHZ to Changsha, arranged by China-based forwarder First Catch, according to reports from SeafoodSource.

The airport was closed soon after the incident but was re-opened later in the day, causing some delays in other flights that continued into the evening, said a statement from YHZ.  The lobsters that had been scheduled to fly to China were picked up instead on a flight chartered by Gateway Aviation, the airport said.

Halifax has recently seen a sharp increase in lobster exports to China in the wake of Chinese tariffs imposed on American goods, which were a response to U.S. tariffs levied earlier this year by President Trump on Chinese imports to the U.S. As prices rose on the highly-sought-after lobsters from New England, forwarders have been seeking lobster markets in the Canadian Maritimes since this summer.