An airliner has skidded off a runway at New York's La Guardia airport, sliding to a halt just metres from frigid waters, as a snow storm battered the US from Texas to the east coast.
Heavy snow was falling as Delta flight 1086 from Atlanta careered off the runway, ploughed up an embankment and demolished a fence after its landing.
New York firefighters say 24 people have suffered non life-threatening injuries, including three taken from the scene.
Video footage showed passengers climbing out of the plane through an exit over a wing and trudging through thick snow. The plane's nose jutted through the fence, suspended above the icy East River.
It was the most dramatic incident on a day in which a huge winter storm forced thousands of flight cancellations, and disrupted life across a broad swath of the US.
In Washington DC, government workers were ordered to stay home, schools were closed, and museums shut for the day as icy rain turned to heavy snow.
Airports braced for travel chaos, with more than 4,300 flights cancelled by Thursday afternoon and more cancellations and delays expected.
Forecasters had warned of low visibility in New York, and some 40 per cent of flights had been cancelled at La Guardia before the accident, according to flightaware.com.
New York Port Authority executive director Patrick Foye did not say what caused the accident, only that the runway was recently cleared.
He said the plane skidded more than 1.3km down the runway and that the aircraft's emergency chutes did not deploy after it hit the embankment.
But he assured there was no risk of it coming into contact with the river.
"The plane did not make contact with the water, happily that was never a risk today," he said.
Delta said earlier the 125 passengers and six crew aboard the McDonnell Douglas MD88 plane had disembarked via aircraft slides and were moved to the terminal on buses.
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