by Donald Wood
Last updated: 8:50 AM ET, Tue December 27, 2016
On Tuesday, a Jet Airways preparing to take off from Goa International Airport in India skidded off a runway, across a field and crashed into a ditch next to a service road, leaving several passengers injured.
According to Reuters.com, Jet Airways Flight 9W2374 was preparing for its flight from Goa to Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai with 161 people on board-154 passengers and seven crew members-when the incident occurred before daybreak.
A spokesperson for Jet Airways told local news outlets that at least 12 people were injured when the plane veered off the runway "due to a technical glitch while aligning for takeoff."
Images provided by Indian news outlets showed passengers being evacuated from the plane and several people on stretchers being attended to by medics. The plane suffered heavy damage to its underside and one of its wings.
"I fractured my leg," Dinesh Kumar, a passenger on the plane, told Times Now TV. "The moment the plane started running on the runway, it slipped into the nearby field and there was smoke inside the flight."
"It needs time for proper investigation to go on and we are cooperating with the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation)," a Jet Airways spokeswoman told Reuters.com.
The incident comes as India's air travel industry is booming. The number of passenger on domestic flights in the country jumped 21 percent in 2015 to more than 80 million, and officials estimate there will be 300 million potential passengers by 2022.
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