If you have ever flown into Jackson Hole, Wyoming, you will be hard-pressed to find a prettier landscape to fly in and out of. After all, this is the only commercial airport in the United States that resides in a national park. Despite all of this, runway excursions are not immune.

As you know, Romanucci & Blandin has been very vocal about the safety of our skies—especially regarding our landings. Lately, there have been way too many incidents of overruns and excursions. The NTSB is investigating another such incident from Jackson Hole.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent two investigators to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to investigate an incident in which a United Airlines jet veered off the side of a runway.

On February 25, 2008, at 9:16 pm MST, an Airbus A-320, registration N442UA, operated by United Airlines as flight 267, departed the right side of runway 19 during landing at Jackson Hole Airport. The captain, first officer, four flight attendants and 119 passengers evacuated the aircraft via the emergency slides. During the evacuation, one of the inflatable slides did not deploy. No serious injuries have been reported.

The airplane departed Denver at 7:44 pm MST with Jackson Hole as the intended destination. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed during the nighttime landing. The reported weather at the airport at the time of the incident was calm winds, 10 miles of visibility, and overcast clouds at 3200 feet above the ground. The airplane came to rest on its landing gear at about a 90-degree angle to the runway in snow about three feet deep.

An initial examination of the aircraft revealed no readily visible signs of structural damage or evidence of fire. The captain and first officer have both been interviewed by Safety Board investigators. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) were removed from the aircraft and sent to the NTSB headquarters in Washington, where they will be read out. Investigators are expected to remain on-scene for several days as they continue documenting the incident.