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All of the 136 passengers and seven crew members had been rescued by early Saturday morning, a Navy spokeswoman said. None of the injuries were life-threatening, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said.
“I think it is a miracle,” Capt. Michael P. Connor, the commanding officer at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, said at a news conference early Saturday. “We could be talking about a different story.”
The sheriff’s office said the plane had never been submerged. Photos showed it floating on the St. Johns River in an image eerily reminiscent of the January 2009 emergency landing of a US Airways jet on the Hudson River.
The accident occurred about 9:40 p.m. as the pilot attempted to land the jet amid thunder and heavy rains.
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Early images from social media showed rescue teams scurrying over the plane. “While they work please pray,” Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville said in a Twitter message posted at 10:30 p.m.
About 15 minutes later, he followed up: “This is a developing situation. I’ve been briefed that all lives have been accounted for.” Emergency response teams, he added, were working to control jet fuel leaking into the river.
The mayor said the White House had called to offer its assistance. “We are all 1 family. 1 people. 1 City,” Curry said in a Twitter post.
The flight was operated by Miami Air International, a charter company that shuttles military service members from the base in Guantánamo Bay to naval air stations in Jacksonville and Norfolk, Virginia. The flights run every Friday and every other Tuesday, said Susan Brink, a Navy spokeswoman.
Officials for Miami Air International did not return phone calls about the accident. The company’s website said the airline has a fleet of Boeing 737s that caters to the military, religious groups, sports teams and corporate groups.
Brink said Miami Air International flights typically carry active duty personnel and their families, contractors and others with clearance to travel to Guantánamo Bay, where the military operates a naval base and a prison for accused and convicted terrorists. She said she did not have a specific breakdown of the passengers on Friday’s flight.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to start an inquiry. Boeing said it also was investigating, but would not comment further.
The company has been under intense scrutiny following two deadly crashes of its 737 Max jet within months of each other: Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March of this year. Miami Air International’s website says the airline exclusively uses the Boeing 737-800 jet, which is a different model.
Both deadly 737-Max flights lacked two safety features, which Boeing charged extra for, and the company has recently faced claims that several manufacturing errors have occurred in the late stages of production at its plant near Charleston, South Carolina.
The Max planes have been grounded in the United States and several other countries in the aftermath of the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
The Max is the only plane designed in Boeing’s 737 fleet that does not include an electronic alert system for malfunctions, leaving pilots only with the option to manually check on errors.