Plane Skids Off Runway Into Cars

A jetliner trying to land in heavy snow slid off a runway, crashed through a boundary fence and slid into a busy street, hitting one vehicle and pinning another beneath it Thursday. A child in one of the vehicles was killed.

Two passengers on the Boeing 737 suffered minor injuries, and eight people in the two vehicles outside Midway International Airport were hurt in the incident, authorities said. Five people were in one vehicle, four in the other.

The child, a 6-year-old boy, was dead on arrival at the hospital, spokeswoman Deborah Song said. Two adults and two other children were at the hospital, their conditions ranging from serious to good, she said.

A nursing supervisor at another hospital said an 8-year-old girl was being treated there late Thursday night.

Ninety-eight passengers and five crew members were on board Southwest Airlines Flight 1248.

Passenger Mike Abate, 35, of suburban Milwaukee said after the landing he saw a father carrying an injured child and other people being taken away in an ambulance.

"That was the toughest part. We were safe on the plane, but the toughest part was to realize that someone was under the belly of the plane," Abate said.

Midway was closed indefinitely after the accident, Aviation Department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 from Baltimore to Chicago slid off the runway about 7:15 p.m. at the northwest corner of the airport, through the boundary fence and into the roadway.

The airplane's nose was crushed and a severely damaged engine was on the ground, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said.

Passenger Larry Vazzano, 54, of the Baltimore area said the landing seemed normal at first.

"There was a bump. I saw snow rush over the wing, then there was a big bump," Vazzano said. "I braced myself on the seat in front of me."

He said some passengers used inflatable slides to get out of the plane in the blowing snow, while others exited from stairs at the rear of the plane.

The passengers were held for questioning by investigators and first responders for about three hours, Vazzano said.

At a news conference in Dallas, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said the jetliner's captain had been flying for about a decade and the first officer had about 2½ years' experience. He did not name them.

Southwest flies an all-737 fleet with more than 400 aircraft.

The plane circled Midway for about half an hour because of the weather and traffic before it was cleared for landing, Kelly said.

"There are no indications that there are any maintenance problems with that aircraft whatsoever," Kelly said, adding that the plane had a service check in Phoenix on Wednesday.

National Transportation Safety Board and FAA officials from Washington were en route to Chicago to investigate.

James Burnett, a former NTSB chairman, said investigators would likely examine such factors as weather, instrumentation, engines and runway operations, in particular whether snow removal was adequate.

"When you're looking at a runway overrun, it almost always involves a runway condition that's improper," Burnett told WFLD-TV. "But that's not the only thing."

Midway reported 7 inches of snow Thursday, but Abrams said runway conditions at the time were acceptable.

The airport, Chicago's second largest, is closely bordered by streets lined with homes and businesses. Midway serves more than 17 million travelers a year, many of them on Southwest.

The accident occurred 33 years to the day after a crash at Midway that killed 45 people, two of them on the ground.

In that crash, the pilot of United Airlines Flight 533 was instructed by the control tower to execute a "missed approach" pattern. The pilot applied full power to go around for another landing attempt.

A little more than a mile from the airport, the airliner struck tree branches, then hit the roofs of a number of neighborhood bungalows before plowing into a home, bursting into flames. Eighteen passengers survived.

Elsewhere, storms have delivered freezing cold and dumped as much as 10 inches of snow, snarling traffic and closing schools from Illinois to Texas.

Forecasters say the heaviest band of snow is along the Interstate 35 corridor into Kansas City, with up to ten inches on the ground.

At least three people have been killed in wrecks, including a four-year-old girl and her mother near Edgerton, Kan.

The heaviest band of snow fell along the Interstate 35 corridor into Kansas City, with up to 10 inches, said Greg Koch, a National Weather Service forecaster. Temperatures in the city fell into the single digits.

Numerous vehicles slipped off roads or got into fender benders, troopers said. On snow-packed I-35 near Edgerton, Kan., a 31-year-old woman's pickup slid across the median and collided with another vehicle, killing her and her 4-year-old daughter Wednesday, authorities said.

A 66-year-old man was also killed when his van left a highway and struck a tree in Lyon County, Kan., while as many as 20 cars each piled up in wrecks on Interstate 29, north of Platte City, Mo., and on Interstate 44 near St. Louis.

"A lot of people aren't slowing down," said Judy Gilchrist, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Turnpike Authority. "They still want to use their cruise control."

A low pressure-system is spreading moderate to heavy snow through the Ohio valley and lower Great Lakes today. Meanwhile, rain is falling through the southeastern U.S. with thunderstorms over the Gulf Coast region and a little ice is falling through the southern Appalachians, CBS News reports.

The moisture from the Gulf of Mexico is producing so much snow, reports CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan creating one of the

In Dallas, an out-of-control tractor-trailer rig on Interstate 20 slid into a parked SUV, which burst into flames. No one was injured. That region's freezing precipitation was expected to taper off Thursday, but a hard freeze will preserve some ice, forecasters said.

In Oklahoma, up to 5 inches of snow fell, and the temperature plunged as low as 6 below early Thursday in Guymon on the sweeping plains of the Panhandle.

Wednesday, mercury dived to a record 45 below at West Yellowstone, Mont., the frequently cold spot at the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park, the National Weather Service said. The old record for Dec. 7 was 39 below, set in 1927.

The cold even extended south to the Texas Panhandle, where Lubbock shivered at a record low 6 above zero, the weather service said.