 New York plane crash kills 49
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-14 08:10 CLARENCE, New York: A commuter plane "basically dived" into a house while coming in for a landing, sparking a fiery explosion that killed all 48 people on board and one person on the ground, an emergency official said on Friday. One Chinese national, Yao Shibin, was among the victims. Yao, born in 1971, was an employee at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Luo Gang, a consul at the Chinese Consulate General in New York. It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the US in two and a half years. Witnesses heard the twin turboprop aircraft sputtering before it went down in light snow and fog around 10:20 pm on Thursday (11:20 am Beijing time, Friday). Flames silhouetted the shattered home after Continental Connection Flight 3407 plummeted into it about 8 km from Buffalo Niagara International Airport. "The whole sky was lit up orange," said Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile from the crash site. "All of a sudden, there was a big bang, and the house shook."
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said there is "no indication of any security-related event" that brought the plane down. Six hours after the crash, the task of retrieving remains had not yet begun. "It's still a hot scene," Clarence emergency control director Dave Bissonette said. "The fuselage lies right on the footprint of the house." Prior to the crash, the voice of a female pilot on Continental Flight 3407 could be heard communicating with air traffic controllers, according to a recording of the Buffalo air traffic control's radio messages shortly before the crash captured by the website www.liveatc.net. Neither the controller nor the pilot showed any concerns that anything was out of the ordinary as the airplane was asked to fly at 700 m. A minute later, the controller tries to contact the plane but hears no response. After a pause, he tries to contact the plane again. Eventually he tells an unidentified listener to contact authorities on the ground in the Clarence area. "You need to find if anything is on the ground," the controller says. "All I can tell you is the aircraft is over the marker (landing beacon), and we're not talking to them now." After the crash, at least two pilots are heard saying they have been picking up ice on their wings. "We've been getting ice since 20 miles south of the airport," one says. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said there was no indication terrorism was involved. Agencies (China Daily 02/14/2009 page1) |
The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft, operated by Colgan Air, was flying from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and preparing to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.