GOOSE BAY, Newfoundland -- A TWA Boeing 747 en route from Frankfurt, West Germany, to New York made an emergency landing at Goose Bay airport Friday because part of its fuselage broke off, an airport security official said.
One woman among the 308 passengers and 13 crew members was slightly during an emergency evacuation, a spokesman at nearby Melville Hospital said.
Elizabeth Smith, 47, of Albuquerque, N.M., bruised her left hip as she slid down an emergency chute, the spokesman said.
'She's rather stiff, but nothing is broken,' the spokesman said. 'She is staying in the hospital overnight.'
The rest of the passengers and crew flew to New York's Kennedy International Airport Friday night after TWA sent a replacement aircraft and crew from New York.
Wally Broomfield, a security official at Goose Bay airport, said a 1-by-3-foot piece of fuselage broke off just below the left wing of the aircraft and set off a fire alarm.
'When that happened, (the crew) thought there was a fire and made an emergency landing here,' he said. 'When they landed, they found no indication of a fire. But the fuselage under the wing was bent and the edges were jagged. If they had kept flying, it might have got worse.'
Fire trucks and ambulances waiting on the runway for the flight were not needed.
'The basic thing is (that) it was a precautionary landing,' said Fred Farrar, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Washingtion. He said the FAA is investigating the incident.
Goose Bay, with a population of 6,000, is in the rugged Labrador area of Newfoundland.
