JACKSONVILLE, Fla — **RAW VIDEO: Video may be shaky**
The 737 aircraft that overran runway 10 at NAS Jacksonville Friday night will be moved by barge to Green Cove Springs. Hopes to transport the plane dwindled Tuesday after the plane was lifted onto a barge from where it had come to rest at the edge of the St. Johns River after failing to stop.
“It’s disappointing but It’s probably for safety reasons,” said Bill Taylor Tuesday afternoon after coming with his wife Connie to the river’s edge at Kingsley Avenue in Orange Park, hoping to catch the odd sight of an airliner going under a bridge on a barge. He was correct: the stated reason for postponing transport until Wednesday morning was that the journey would take five to six hours and there were only about three hours of daylight remaining.
But that wasn’t the only concern.
“[The Buckman Bridge underpass] looks pretty narrow from a boat,” Jay Baldwin, a lifelong resident and boater in the area said. “So with the wingspan of a plane intact, it’s going to be very close getting that thing through there. I’ll be shocked if they can get it through.”
Although the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) couldn’t divulge the exact width of space between the bridge’s vertical columns, the span where fenders are in place to support the columns is about 150 feet wide. The listed wingspan of a 737-800 aircraft is 117 feet, five inches. Because the decision was made not to remove the plane’s wings before transporting it, that could mean a surgical process of navigating with a maximum of about 16 feet between both wingtips and the fenders.
“The water’s pretty rough, so getting through that narrow span of the bridge in these kinds of conditions is going to be tricky, for sure,” Baldwin continued, warning that, assuming the plane clears the bridge without incident, the St. Johns River is as precariously shallow as it is notoriously turbulent at times.
“You can get stuck in this river over 100 yards off the banks, so you’ve got to really keep it between the markers there.”
FDOT told First Coast News on Tuesday that it does not plan to close the Buckman Bridge while the 737 is passing underneath. Efforts to begin moving the aircraft could begin as early as sunrise Wednesday morning. Bill and Connie Taylor say they’ll likely be back.
“If we find time and find that they’re actually moving it, we certainly will.”
