NEW YORK, 13 November — Disaster struck New York and panic gripped the city again when an American Airlines Airbus A-300 slammed into a residential neighborhood yesterday killing all 246 passengers and nine crew on board. The crash, which occurred after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport, destroyed homes and ignited new fears in a city still reeling from shock of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The American Airlines Flight 587 bound for Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, crashed into the Rockaway area in the borough of Queens.
Witnesses reported seeing the Airbus A-300 on fire before it slammed into the ground stoking fears of another terrorist attack two months and one day after hijackers devastated the World Trade Center in Manhattan, about 25 kilometers away.
"For God’s sake, not again," Queens resident Julio Barriere, 53, remembered thinking as the fully-fueled plane, already engulfed in flames, descended toward his fishing spot in Rockaway Beach, 8 kilometers from John F. Kennedy Airport, where the jet took off. The bodies of 161 people were recovered from the site.
"There are six people who have been reported missing in Rockaway (area) right now," New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN Security Council the crash was apparently an accident.
"This is an incredibly sad day," Donald Carty, chairman of American Airlines told journalists.
The National Transportation Safety Board said all information received thus far about the crash suggests it was an accident.
Thick black smoke belched into the air from the crash site and television pictures showed shards of flaming wreckage strewn across the streets of a tree-lined residential area.
Giuliani immediately put the city on high alert. The mayor said there were "no survivors" from the plane.
US military jets were scrambled and sent on combat patrols over the city. All bridges, tunnels and airports serving New York were closed. New York authorities later reopened bridges and tunnels in the city. The three major airports in the New York metropolitan area were reopened yesterday but takeoffs from John F. Kennedy International Airport remained suspended.
Despite the high alert, Giuliani urged New Yorkers not to panic. "Everyone should remain calm, we have talked to the White House several times, there is air cover, you can see the jets up in the air, making certain this is an isolated incident," Giuliani said.
"We have put the city on high alert," he said, adding that the fire and smoke around the crash site is "very, very bad."
Giuliani said eyewitness reports suggested an engine had tumbled from the doomed plane before it crashed into houses in the New York borough of Queens, opposite Manhattan. "At least one group of people who saw it say that the engine came off first, then the plane crashed," Giuliani told local television. "Our effort has to be focused on trying to save any survivors if there are any," Giuliani said. "The rest of the city should remain as calm as possible."
There were no immediate details of casualties on the ground, though television reports said a number of houses were on fire.
An unidentified eyewitness told local television that she had looked out her window and seen the plane going down.
"It was intact, the wings were there, the tail was there, the nose was there, no smoke was coming from it against the blue sky. A huge silver plane going straight down."
The White House said communications with plane were normal. "All communications were normal prior to the crash," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
"By all first reports, there were no unusual communications between the cockpit and the tower at (John F. Kennedy International Airport) or the New York facility that was handed over communications after the plane departed from the airport area," he told reporters.
Rumors are already flying, and in response to a question at yesterday’s White House briefing, Fleischer quashed the buzz that an unidentified administration official had said there was an explosion on board prior to the crash. "There is no such report," he said tersely.
Air crash investigators have retrieved the flight data recorder from the wreckage of the plane, said National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Marion Blakey.
She said that debris from the plane was "scattered over a wide area" around the main crash site. The Coast Guard had removed pieces of the wing from Jamaica Bay, on which Jairport is situated.
Blakey was flying to Washington with the "black box" while NTSB officials remained at the main crash sites, where at least four houses were destroyed and 14 damaged.
"We have reports that there were certainly a number of pieces of the wreckage, including engine parts, that were scattered some distance from the actual crash crater."
