Florida track & field suffers scare in the air

By Adam Silverstein
June 10, 2012

On the way back to Gainesville, FL after competing in the 2012 NCAA Outdoor Championships, which the men’s team won for the first time in program history on Saturday, Florida Gators track & field apparently had problems with their flight and underwent a rough landing in Tuscaloosa, AL.

Several members of the team – both student-athletes and support staff – tweeted about the incident shortly after landing safely. The pilot told his passengers that the windshield of the plane cracked at 37,000 feet and eventually shattered once it landed.

Florida was on a charter flight along with Florida State, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi State and was scheduled to land in order to drop the latter three programs off before eventually unloading in Tallahassee, FL and driving back to Gainesville.

Despite initial concerns that the plane had made a “crash” landing, a notion tweeted out by a Gators student-athlete, it appears that the rough landing was combination of there being a crack in the windshield and a big plane being forced to land on a small runway.

A new plane was scheduled to pick up the remaining parties for their trek back to Florida.

The above picture is courtesy of UF assistant director of strength and conditioning for Olympic sports Matt DeLancey, who posted it on Twitter early Sunday morning.

“[The windshield] cracked at 37,000 feet. Our pilots never seemed to panic. #Ballers!” he tweeted after sending out the picture.

OGGOA will update this story further when more information is made available.

One Comment

  1. Basshole says:

    Glad everybody made it home safe!

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