Air Canada plane leaves Halifax runway on 'abrupt' landing

AP , Sunday 29 Mar 2015

Canada Air
Passengers Randy Hall, left, and Lianne Clark, from Mount Uniacke, Canada stand waiting at an airport hotel after Air Canada flight 624 left the runway on landing at Stanfield International Airport in Halifax on Sunday, March. 29, 2015. (AP Photo)

An Air Canada plane made an "abrupt" landing and left the runway at the Halifax airport in bad weather, and officials said early Sunday that 23 people were taken to a hospital for observation and treatment of minor injuries.

The airline said a preliminary count showed Flight AC624 from Toronto had 132 passengers and five crew members.

"We are thankful no serious injuries have been reported," Halifax Stanfield International Airport tweeted. The airport said its airfield remained closed.

Flight tracking service FlightAware showed that the plane is an AirbusA320, which has typical seating for 150.

Power at the airport was briefly knocked out, but Nova Scotia Power said they had since restored it. The cause of the outage was not yet clear.

The Halifax region is currently under a snowfall warning, with an Environment Canada alert saying, "Visibility may be suddenly reduced at times in heavy snow."

Another flight tracking site, Flightradar24, listed several cancelled flights at the airport Sunday morning.

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