BANGOR, Maine — An airplane that got stuck in the mud at Bangor International Airport this weekend is now free after being immobilized for more than a day.
The American Eagle jet landed safely from Philadelphia on Saturday but veered off the tarmac into a grassy area during the taxi to the gate, airport spokesperson Aimee Thibodeau said Monday.
According to Thibodeau, nobody was injured, and passengers say they were taken to the terminal less than an hour after the aircraft got stuck. Some on board didn’t even know the plane had gone off the pavement until after the fact.
"Folks were looking out the window. They noticed that we were in the grass and people started talking about 'ok we’re stuck,'" Vicki Blais, a passenger, said Monday.
Before the incident, Thibodeau says conditions on the tarmac were less than ideal. “It had been very wet on the runway,” Thibodeau said. “Once they got into the mud, there was nothing they could do.”
Much of the reason the plane stayed stuck for so long could be the combination of saturated ground and plane wheels that have little to no traction.
As flight instructor Ian Riley explained, “The hard pressure wheels [on planes] tend to dig in and drive themselves into the mud.”
When submerged in a soft surface, Riley says, plane wheels tend to act more like roller blades than truck tires.
This is part of the reason why Thibodeau said the plan was to remove the jet by crane, “so it doesn’t get more buried into the mud.”
The jet was removed from the grass Monday afternoon. American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.