Jetliner hits car, kills 6-year-old in Chicago

CHICAGO -- A jetliner trying to land in heavy snow slid off a runway at Midway International Airport, crashed through the boundary fence and slid into a busy street, hitting one vehicle and pinning another beneath it.\nNo injuries were immediately reported on the plane, but a six-year-old child was killed in the vehicle, said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.\n"It got really bumpy, and (there was) a big crashing sound," passenger Katie Duda told WMAQ-TV. The next thing she knew, she said, the airplane was past the airport and in the street.\n"Everyone was very calm. Everyone around me seemed very OK," she said.\nShe said the passengers used inflatable slides to get out of the plane in the blowing snow. As many as 95 people were aboard, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation.\nThe Boeing 737, Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 from Baltimore to Chicago, slid off the runway at the northwest corner of the airport, through the boundary fence and into the roadway, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Chicago.\nThe 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.\nA Southwest Airlines spokesman had no immediate information about the incident. Southwest flies an all-737 fleet with more than 400 aircraft.\nA man who identified himself as an aircraft mechanic at Midway told WBBM-AM that the plane's nose gear had collapsed and at least one of the engines was damaged. The NTSB is investigating.\nSnow caused traffic woes for travelers across the Midwest on Thursday, with as much as 10 inches of snow in some areas and seven inches at Midway.