Jet 'exploded into pieces' (Witnesses "Saw Explosion On One Side of Plane Before Crash")

BBC & CNN ^ | November 12, 2001 | BBC & CNN News Staffs

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Jet 'exploded into pieces'

Monday, 12 November, 2001

BBC Residents watched as firefighters battled the blaze

Eyewitnesses have spoken of their horror at seeing an Airbus A300 crash into a residential area of New York. Witnesses reported seeing a fire or explosion on one side of the aircraft as an engine fell off.

The plane then crashed into the Rockaway area of Queens.

I saw the flames and the smoke and I just thought, 'Oh no, not again'

Milena Owens, who lives yards from the crash site, said she was putting up Thanksgiving decorations on her window when she saw the plane fly far too low.

"I heard the explosion and I looked out the window and saw the flames and the smoke and I just thought, 'Oh no, not again'."

"The whole house shook," said Gus Cholakis, who lives 100 yards from the spot where some of the wreckage came to rest.

Resident's prayers

"I looked out the window, the first thing I saw was a huge fireball right outside."

Mr Cholakis, 38, said he had known 13 of those lost when the World Trade Center collapsed.

This neighbourhood has been through enough

Gus Cholakis

He admitted he was praying he had not lost more friends, adding: "This neighbourhood has been through enough."

John Maroney, 47, said the engine plummeted onto a Texaco petrol station near his house, and pieces of plane were only a few hundred yards away.

"That's probably what shook us up from our beds. The whole house jumped.

'Climbing position'

"We were all out there with fire extinguishers and hoses, but we couldn't do much."

Ethan Moses said he had seen the plane climbing in the sky after take-off.

It was travelling to the left slightly and then it just nose dived straight down

Ethan Moses , "It was in a climbing position and when I looked up I saw fire on the left side of the engine," he told CNN.

The wing appeared to separate from the rest of the plane, which veered to the left and then plunged into a nose dive, he said.

"It was travelling to the left slightly and then it just nose dived straight down," Mr Moses said, adding that fire spread on the ground, moving from house to house within seconds.

Phyllis Paul said she heard the plane's engine drone louder as it descended.

Falling metal

"It was very, very loud. Because of what happened on 11 September, it gave me a chill," she told CNN.

"It was getting louder and louder and I looked out the window. I saw a piece of metal falling from the sky."

The wings were going backwards and forwards like it was trying to balance itself
Phyllis Paul

Beverly Browne, from Brooklyn, said she saw white smoke coming from the plane before it crashed.

"The wings were going backwards and forwards like it was trying to balance itself. There was white smoke coming out of it.

"It just couldn't seem to stabilise itself. The next thing I knew it had crashed."

? David Solero was driving over a bridge by Rockaway when he saw fire on the left hand side of the plane.

He told CNN: "We looked up and saw the fire coming from the left hand side - it could have been an explosion."

Plane 'veered'

Other witnesses told reporters that the fire or explosion was on the right hand side of the plane.

Mr Solero added: "It could have been the engine was on fire.

I was scared it was going to veer towards us and hit us - we stopped dead in our tracks

David Solero, "It flew right over us, started to veer to the left then it veered back right.

"I was scared it was going to veer towards us and hit us - we stopped dead in our tracks.

"We saw something fly off the plane."

One woman fled her home, fearing she could be killed.

Concorde-like sound

She told CNN: "It was a huge, loud sound. It seemed so loud that I was like ducking almost.

"I just heard - it sounded like Concorde flying too low and then it just hit.

Eyewitness
-- "It blew up into a huge fireball and I jumped out the second floor of my house." "It hit the house behind me and I think it exploded into pieces."

"I went over the deck in the front of my house because the back was so hot."

"We were just in shock and we had to evacuate two streets away. It was so horrible." "There is a lot of terror here. Everybody is in shock."

"I was very, very lucky."

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Pray for America

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Witnesses said they saw an explosion on one side of the plane before the crash, but different accounts placed the explosion on different sides of the aircraft. Ethan Moses said he saw the aircraft burning from its left side, then the aircraft's left engine fell off.

[spycatcher]

It appears that a lone left wing nut was the culprit.

[Heisenburger]

Plane went in for maintenance a few days ago. How much anyone want to bet that a Muslim was on the maintenance crew?

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Live Witness on FOX cable TV right now is saying she saw a fireball come down right before it hit.

Also FOX is saying there are no survivors.

[areafiftyone]

One black box has been found and is on its way to Washington. We will know soon enough what happened. American Airlines gave a lousy news conference.

[FreeTally]

How much anyone want to bet that a Muslim was on the maintenance crew?

Or that some maintenance workers F'ed up. Nah, that never happens......

[tomakaze]

I just keep thinking back to all the foriegn nationals they still have working baggage.
Sheeese.

[t-shirt]

Very possible, very few maintainence workers and baggage handlers and have been fired for security reasons after the attacks on September 11, 2001. And if you been to most any airport many Middle Easterners have these jobs where they have access to plant bombs etc.

[dead]

If it was terrorism, it sounds like it had to have been done by a maintenance worker or somebody who was able to pass for one.

Of course, everything I’ve read says the Airbus is a flying piece of crap, so it may not be terrorism at all.

[Wm Bach]

Maybe the Europlane just isn't built tough like Buddy Lee Boeing.

This could be the beginning of the microfracture/metal fatigue time limit on those airframes and we're going to see the Gloucester Comet fiasco all over again.

[Noswad]

It is an easy mistake. Left side/right side depends on one's perspective.

Looking at the plane from the front makes left/right the opposite of those that are looking at it from behind or sitting in it.

[GreatOne]

Gee - this all occurs the day that the study regarding how Al Gore "really won" in Florida comes out. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Sincerely,

Oliver Stone, Alan Dershowitz, Al Franken, Bill and Hitlery Clinton, Paul Begala, Barbara Streisand, Jeffrey Toobin, Joe Conasan, Bill Maher, and Dweebs from the Democratic Underground

[Junior]

Neil Boortz used to point out that, no matter the actual circumstances, one can always find some yahoo who saw the airplane explode in the air.

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(CNN Story that was supposed to be posted atop thread along with BBC story):

Witnesses saw plane nose-dive

November 12, 2001 Posted: 12:16 PM EST (1716 GMT)

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NEW YORK (CNN) -- For residents near the beaches of New York's borough of Queens, a quiet Veterans Day holiday brought a fresh taste of catastrophe Monday.

Numerous residents, many with children home for the day, saw American Airlines Flight 587 catch fire and plunge to earth Monday morning. Black smoke billowed over the neighborhood from the crash scene and from at least three other sites, where flaming debris caused other fires.

More than 40 fire trucks and 200-plus firefighters were dispatched to the scene.

The neighborhood is home to numerous New York firefighters, who took heavy losses in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

"The Rockaway community was hit hard between the firefighters and civilians who were lost at the World Trade Center," said Chief Jimmy Trudden of the Broad Channel Volunteer Fire Department. "For this to happen in this neighborhood, it's tragic. I can't put it into words."

Witnesses said they saw an explosion on one side of the plane before the crash, but different accounts placed the explosion on different sides of the aircraft. Ethan Moses said he saw the aircraft burning from its left side, then the aircraft's left engine fell off.

"It tilted to the left slightly and it made a nosedive, straight down," Moses said.

Firefighters said one of the Airbus A300's two engines fell off, crashing into a house and setting it on fire.

Another woman described the neighborhood around the crash site as a scene of "complete and utter terror. Everybody is so distraught and upset and in shock," she said.

When the plane approached, "I thought it was like the Concorde and it was flying too low," she said. "Then it hit. It was like a bomb exploded."

The crash occurred about 5 miles from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the jet had just taken off for the Dominican Republic's capital Santo Domingo.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. warplanes have patrolled the airspace around New York. Susan Locke, who lives about five blocks away, said she thought the noise at first was a fighter jet.

"I looked out the window and saw a plane nose-dive, straight down," she said.

Phyllis Paul, who lives near the crash site, said a "big, silvery piece of metal" fell behind her house before the plane went down. Paul, who was eating breakfast when she heard the plane, got her 10-year-old son and got out of the house.

"I was sitting having breakfast and I heard the engines very loud," she said. "They were loud and low, and because of what happened September 11, it gave me a chill."

[eddie willers]

LOL!

[Sabertooth]

ABC is reporting through several sources, one of them being Mayor Giuliani, that part of a wing landed in the bay near by.

John Nance, former airline pilot and ABC's Aviation Expert, felt that was very significant, stating that wreckage in three sites, with a wing landing apart from the engine and the fusilage, indicated something "more catastrophic" than an engine falling off.

He stopped short of saying bombs or "terrorists," but that seemed to be where he was leaning. There are baggage compartments near where the wing meets the fusilage. He thought it very unlikely that an engine falling off could take off the entire wing.

[kahoutek]

"The wings were going backwards and forwards like it was trying to balance itself."

This was described to me once as a "Dutch roll", the effect of a trailing wing losing lift and subsequently giving the opposite wing lift in a repeating motion similar to a swimmer's backstroke.

[Landru]

Rush just mentioned all 300 pcs of checked baggage had confirmed owners.

These, "eye witness" accounts are to be carefully considered.
For example, the film showing the second jet hitting WTC #2 looked to me as-if it'd flown from the perspective of the person holding the camera & into the building; to me.
Truth was, that jet was coming toward the person holding the camera, & went behind the building & the camera's view; then crashed into the building.

The brain creates an optical illusion of things not normally in the conscious mind.
I'd have to believe the sight of a crashing 767 air bus would qualify as something quite extraordinary, as *normal* events would go.

[Timesink]

Witnesses said they saw an explosion on one side of the plane before the crash, but different accounts placed the explosion on different sides of the aircraft.

And every eyewitness account I've seen on TV thus far said there was no explosion at all, until it slammed into the ground.

All this proves is what we already know: There is nothing less reliable than an eyewitness report.