REUTERS/Mike Segar
- A JetBlue plane tilted back with its nose in the air as passengers got off, the airline said.
- A passenger said it tilted when around half the passengers were off, and its tail hit the ground.
- JetBlue said no passengers hurt themselves.
A JetBlue plane tipped backwards, with its nose in the air and its front wheel off the ground, after landing at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
JetBlue said in a statement that the plane tilted back "due to a shift in weight and balance" while passengers were getting off, the Associated Press reported.
JetBlue said that no passenger injuries were reported.
The plane titled back around 30 degrees, according to the AP. It eventually went back to the right angle, JetBlue said.
Footage shared on social media shows the plane, attached to the gangway, with its nose and wheel in the air.
One TikToker, Sinead Bovell, was on the plane and filmed inside the cabin during the incident. Her video shows a flight attendant instructing people to move around inside, seemingly hoping to restore its balance.
She tells them: "Very slowly, little by little, move towards the middle of the airplane, cause apparently everything is, like, it tipped up."
Describing the incident the next day, Bovell said: "I was seated maybe three quarters the way back into the plane."
She said the incident started when just over half the passengers on the plane had got off. At that stage, "the plane abruptly tipped backwards so quickly and so intensely that the tail of the plane hit the pavement of the jet bridge and part of the plane door broke."
She said passengers had to "physically rebalance" the plane by moving around — and that she walked closer to the front as part of that.
She said they had to "strategically exit the plane two rows at a time, take a break. Two rows at a time, take a break."
No one was exiting the plane when it tipped, she said, "thank goodness."
The affected plane was Flight 662 that had landed in New York from Bridgetown, Barbados, on Sunday night, the AP reported.
JetBlue told the AP that the plane was taken out of service for inspection.
The body that oversees the airport, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told CNN that the wider functioning of the airport was not disrupted.