An American Airlines jet with 260 people aboard crashed in a heavily
populated section of the New York City borough of Queens this morning after
taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. There were no reports
of survivors and at least six people were missing on the ground.
The Airbus A300 departed JFK at 9:14 a.m. and crashed minutes later in
the residential Rockaway section of Queens, about 5 miles away, officials
said. Flight 587, carrying 260 people including five infants and nine crew,
was headed for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, American Airlines
said.
Giuliani said 225 bodies had been recovered as of early evening, and at
least six Rockaway residents, all believed to be adults, were missing.
Airline officials said they had no indication of why the plane went down
— there was no distress call from the cockpit. There also were no terror
threats that coincided with the incident today, said a White House
spokesman.
Eyewitnesses gave conflicting accounts of the plane’s final moments. Most
reported seeing the plane on fire and breaking apart, while a few said they
saw an explosion before jet debris began falling and spreading over a wide
area.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation
into the crash. Officials said they had no reason to believe the incident
was the result of a terrorist act, although FBI investigators will also
participate in the probe. “All information we have so far is that this is an
accident,” said NTSB Chairwoman Marion Blakey.
The cockpit voice recorder, one of the plane’s two “black boxes,” was
recovered from the wreckage and sent to a Washington lab for analysis, NTSB
officials said.
Searchers are still looking for the flight data recorder,
the box containing critical data on aircraft flight controls, engine
performance and other mechanical systems. In addition to finding a 20-foot
section of a wing in the water off Rockaway, U.S. Coast Guard searchers
recovered the jet’s vertical stabilizer, or the tail fin, which controls the
rudder, officials said.
“Today’s news comes at a difficult time for the nation, a difficult time
for the airline industry and a difficult time for American Airlines,” said
company Chairman and CEO Donald Carty. “Given the changed world we live in
today, it will be as important as it has ever been to quickly and to
accurately determine the cause of this accident.” Two American Airlines jets
were among the four planes that were hijacked and crashed on Sept. 11.
A passenger list has not been released, but Dominican officials believe
at least 175 Dominicans were on board the plane.
Several Debris Fields, Two Engines Found
For hours after the crash, flames were shooting from one- and two-story
homes in the Queens neighborhood, and thick black smoke billowed above the
crash site, visible for miles. The fires were eventually contained by the
250 firefighters who raced to the scene.
Giuliani said six houses were destroyed from debris that fell from the
twin-engine, twin-aisle plane. Hospitals reported treating more than 30
injured on the ground, mostly firefighters and police officers suffering
from smoke inhalation or abrasions.
After surveying the scene, Giuliani said it was amazing more damage was
not done in the residential neighborhood. “The main part of the plane landed
in one place,” he said. “When we first heard this, we anticipated much more
extensive damage.”
Debris landed throughout the Rockaway section and in the water off shore.
The vertical stabilizer was found in Jamaica Bay between the Rockaway
peninsula and the airport.
In the Belle Harbor neighborhood where most of the plane came down, “the
main part of the plane landed in one confined space,” the mayor said. The
engine of the plane — or at least a part of it — landed at a gas station a
few blocks away and the station owner put out the fire himself. The second
engine fell nearby in a separate location, the mayor said.
The scattering of the debris in at least three locations leads some
aviation experts to point to an in-flight break-up of the plane. “I think
they’ll also have to look at the possibility that there may have been some
structural failure to the airplane,” said Dr. Bernard Loeb, a former NTSB
official.
American Airlines said the jet had a minor maintenance check on Sunday,
and it was scheduled for a major check in July 2002. The plane’s right
engine, which eyewitnesses said they saw fall off the plane, was almost
ready for its major overhaul.
“The number two engine, which is the right engine, had 9,788 hours since
its last overhaul, and an engine will typically have a major overhaul every
10,000 hours,” said Al Becker, American Airlines spokesman. The jet’s left
engine had a major overhaul 694 flight hours ago.
The engine involved into today’s incident, the CF6-80C2 made by General
Electric, has had a series of problems. The FAA has ordered increased
inspections of the engines.
Witnesses: Smoke Trailed Plane After Takeoff
Witnesses of the crash described a crisp, clear autumn morning
interrupted by the unnatural sound of a plane in distress. Already, New York
City residents were wary of low-flying and unusual-sounding planes after the
attacks on the World Trade Center, where about 4,300 people died after two
hijacked passengers jets slammed into the twin towers.
Barbara Morris, a Rockaway Park realtor, was on a Queens golf course when
she heard the jet. “I heard the sound of a plane that didn’t sound right. It
sounded like it was in trouble,” Morris told ABCNEWS.com.
The jet was in what appeared to be a takeoff position, she said, and it
was on fire. Suddenly, Morris heard a boom. “But I couldn’t see the plane,
there was just black smoke and I saw the thing starting to go down,” she
said.
Jackie Power, an eyewitness who lives in Brooklyn, told ABCNEWS she and
her husband were walking their dog about two miles away from the crash site
when she saw the plane apparently on fire.
“It was a clear morning and we were overlooking the water and watching
the ducks when we noticed this plane, there seemed to be fire and we saw
debris fall off of it and then it stopped for a second and then it just
plummeted,” Power said.
Another eyewitness said he saw an engine falling off before the plane hit
the ground.
Aviation sources tell ABCNEWS that Flight 587 had been cleared by the air
traffic control tower, and reached only 2,800 feet before falling off radar.
Possibly supporting the mechanical failure theory, a pilot of another jet
saw smoke coming off Flight 587’s engine as the jet took off, sources say,
as did a passenger on another plane.
Based on the sketchy details emerging from the crash site, ABCNEWS
aviation consultant John Nance said two explanations are possible for the
jet’s downing. There could have been a loss of control of the aircraft due
to an internal explosion for mechanical reasons, or there could have been an
explosion of an incendiary device inside the plane.
“Indeed we have either possibility, we can’t go one direction or another
at this point,” Nance said. “We must wait for the cockpit voice recorder in
order to find out what happened.”
Aviation experts caution that initial eyewitness accounts of plane
crashes are not always accurate.
Giuliani: ‘Tested One More Time’
In a grim reminder of Sept. 11, government officials heard the news of
the crash in horror and moved to react.
Fighter jets have been patrolling the region since the hijacking attacks
on New York and Washington, but Pentagon officials said they received no
distress call this morning and heard about the Queens crash from civilian
authorities only after it was too late to do anything.
By the time a fighter jet could make it to the scene, the plane was
already on the ground.
In Washington, President Bush learned of the jet crash from a note handed
to him at about 9:25 a.m. as he sat in a counterterrorism meeting. The
president conferred with Cabinet officials and agency heads and then called
Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki to express his condolences.
At U.N. headquarters in New York City, where hundreds of diplomats were
gathered for the annual General Assembly debate, U.N. security chief Michael
McCann went on the public address system to announce the crash. The
diplomats were stunned by the news.
The complex was not evacuated, but all vehicles and pedestrians were
banned from entering the grounds. Security had already been significantly
tightened around the building since Sept. 11.
Flight 587 had been scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. and arrive in Santo
Domingo at 12:48 p.m. According to the FAA, though, it took off at 9:14 a.m.
and crashed three minutes later.
Minutes after the crash, New York City moved into a heightened state of
alert. Bridges and tunnels as well as the three area airports — Kennedy,
LaGuardia and Newark — were closed, but later reopened.
The first thing that went through Giuliani’s mind this morning, he said,
was: “Oh my God.”
Rockaway is a middle-class neighborhood, home to many firefighters and
about 70 victims of the World Trade Center attack, said Rep. Anthony Weiner,
D-N.Y., the area’s congressman. The mayor said he had been to Rockaway
several times for funerals and wakes for residents who died on Sept. 11.
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