After taking off from Juan Santamaria International Airport in Costa Rica, pilots experienced a failure of the hydraulic system which caused them to return to the airport for an emergency crash landing. In what can only be described as an unbelievable scene, the Boeing 757-200 airliner skids hundreds of feet before turning abruptly as it falls off of the runway and breaks apart just behind the wings.

Thankfully, neither of the two crew members on board was injured though Boeing did say that one of them underwent medical review as a precautionary measure. While there’s no official account of the contents yet, it would seem to reason that much of it may have been largely undamaged. We can clearly see some of it still strapped down in the photos of the aftermath.

The plane however is likely a giant monument of mostly scrap metal since the fuselage is in almost two very clean-cut pieces. From aerial photos, we can see quite a bit of damage done to the left wing tip as well. Hilariously, DHL had this comment about the plane itself “We can confirm that a DHL de Guatemala SA B757-200F flight JOS2716 sustained damage upon landing at Juan Santamaria airport in Costa Rica.” Thanks, DHL, we weren’t sure.

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They also laid out the plan moving forward “DHL’s incident response team has been activated and an investigation will be conducted with the relevant authorities to determine what happened.” The airport was closed for a time while crews cared for the accident but reopened by 3:30 pm local time.

It’s amazing that this big yellow bird didn’t end up in considerably worse shape and that a fire never broke out. The pilots were well-fueled enough to get to their destination in Guatemala which usually takes around 95 minutes. They returned to the airport just 25 minutes into the trip.

Ultimately, it looks like quite a lot of skill went into keeping this plane as intact as it still is. There are so many different ways that this could’ve gone worse. Thankfully, the pilots made it out with one heck of a cool story. If you have to crash land a plane we can’t think of a cooler way to do it than to leave some sick tire skids and then do an epic drift right at the end.

Lead photo DHL