A Delta Air Lines plane has skidded off a runway during a snowstorm at LaGuardia Airport, forcing "terrified" passengers to evacuate by climbing out onto the plane's broken wing.
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Delta flight 1086, an MD-88 aircraft carrying 125 passengers and six crew members from Atlanta, crashed into a fence and stopped just metres short of plunging into the waters of Flushing Bay about 11.10am on Thursday, local time.
Several passengers were taken to hospitals to be treated for minor injuries, but no one was seriously injured, the New York Fire Department reported.
"There might be some bumps and bruises," said department spokesman Danny Glover.
Television images showed passengers piling out of the plane through an exit over a wing and trudging through thick snow. Many were without coats and were shivering in the cold.
Several passengers on the plane took to social media to describe the frightening experience.
One woman tweeted immediately after the crash that she was on board the plane and was terrified.
Another passenger, Jared Faellaci, posted a picture to Facebook from his seat looking out the window, showing how close the plane came to the bay.
"Two seconds more we would have been in the water!" he wrote.
Runway 13, which is 2100 metres long, runs towards the south-east and, if a plane goes too far, it will end up in Flushing Bay.
The far end is equipped with a crushable foam layer designed to stop planes from going off the pavement, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The devices are designed to provide a last-ditch braking mechanism for planes on runways without the required 300-metre safety zone off the end.
The airport is scheduled to reopen by 7pm local time, according to the FAA.
Poor visibility
Forecasters had warned of low visibility in New York, and about 40 per cent of flights had been cancelled at La Guardia before the accident there, according to FlightAware, a tracking service.
Delta said the 125 passengers and six crew members aboard the plane had disembarked via aircraft slides and were moved to the terminal on buses.
"Our priority is ensuring our customers and crew members are safe," Delta said in a statement.
The airline vowed to "work with all authorities and stakeholders to look into what happened in this incident."
Patrick Foye, the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, praised the efforts of the pilot.
"I think the pilot did everything he could to slow the aircraft down," Mr Foye told the New York Times.
The runway was ploughed shortly before the plane landed, he said.
At 11.05am, only minutes before the crash, he said "two planes landed and reported good breaking actions on the runway."
He would not speculate on the cause of the accident, and said members of the National Transportation Safety Board were on their way to the scene to lead the investigation.
Snow closes major cities
It was the most dramatic incident on a day in which a huge winter storm forced thousands of flight cancellations, and disrupted life across a broad swath of the United States.
The storm is the third in four days for the New York metropolitan area, with WeatherBell Analytics LLC estimating that Thursday's snowfall would push the city's total for the season to about 102 centimetres, 60 per cent more than normal, chief forecaster Joe D'Aleo said.
Federal offices in Washington were closed and 3847 US flights for Thursday cancelled as of 12.20pm New York time, according to FlightAware. As much as 30 centimetres of snow may fall on some areas outside New York City, said Commodity Weather Group LLC.
