Probably pretty unnerving nonetheless, but here's some fun(1) nerdery. If you convert the probable horizontal airspeed (500 MPH ballpark) into feet per minute,

Probably pretty unnerving nonetheless, but here's some fun(1) nerdery. If you convert the probable horizontal airspeed (500 MPH ballpark) into feet per minute, it's about 45,000. Which means the plane went about 15 feet horizontally for each foot it dropped vertically. (Just very rough here, gimme a break.) The slope of its path would've been around -0.067 which is like a 6.7% highway grade. This is allowed on state & federal highways in mountainous areas of the US, though a "steep grade" warning sign is typically required for trucks' sake. The angle of descent would be 3.8º off the horizontal. EDIT for additional nerdery: NYC and Philly are about 80 mi apart, so keeping that assumption of an airspeed of roughly 500MPH, they were in the air about 10 minutes. (1)YET ANOTHER EDIT: Just heard somebody on the flight died, so using the word "fun" above isn't quite right to do. But I'm leaving it, with this note.