AP Photo/Matt SlocumThe skies have been strangely unfriendly this past week.
First Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 carrying 239 people seemingly disappears into thin air, and then today a US Airways jet blew a tire and crashed upon takeoff in Philadelphia.
Happily, all 154 people on board, including five crew members, were fine and, ultimately, the close shave ended up turning into a once-in-a-lifetime (one hopes, anyway) photo opportunity.
"So my plane just crashed," tweeted @han_horan, who posted a pic of the plane tilted nose-first into the ground but otherwise pretty intact.
so my plane just crashed... pic.twitter.com/X51BLwa5PS
? skip (@han_horan) March 13, 2014"I almost just died," she also tweeted, before noting, "So yup," and turning the camera on herself for a selfie that luckily you do not see every day.
so yup pic.twitter.com/2WuLUWzpND
? skip (@han_horan) March 13, 2014Dennis Fee posted a pic to his Facebook of the rescue in progress—and reportedly the first photo of the crash site—that quickly went viral.
"Plane just crashed. But we are OK," he wrote.
The photo, which was presumably snatched up by some media outlet ASAP, shows Fee's fellow passengers disembarking via emergency slides. A little girl carrying a pink backpack is among those making her way through the runway-adjacent field where the plane went down.
Flight 1702 was taking off for Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., shortly after 6:30 p.m. ET when the accident happened.
"We believe the tire blew, causing the nose gear to collapse, while it was moving down the runway," a Philadelphia International Airport spokeswoman told USA Today.
Fee also snapped video that was posted to Instagram by ABC News, truly making this no-casualty crash the social media event of the day.