Air Force Jet Slams Into Airport Hotel, Killing 9 : Fighter Pilot Ejects in Indianapolis After Effort to Make Emergency Landing Fails; 6 Others Hurt

A disabled Air Force fighter jet clipped the roof of a bank and slammed into a crowded hotel near the international airport here Tuesday after the pilot failed to make an emergency landing and ejected safely from the plane.

Authorities said nine people on the ground were killed as the front of the hotel, a seven-story Ramada Inn, erupted in a fireball. Six other people were reported injured--one critically, with severe burns over most of his body.

Investigators continued to sift through the charred and twisted wreckage of the hotel late Tuesday, looking for bodies, but by nightfall airport officials said they did not believe that they would find any further casualties. The hotel had registered 103 overnight guests and housed another 20 employees and an additional 40 to 50 people attending conferences at the time of the impact.

Air Force technicians were conducting the investigation into the crash rather than investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, which probes accidents involving civilian craft.

The Air Force identified the pilot, the sole occupant of the aging, single-engine A-7 Corsair jet fighter, as Maj. Bruce Teagarden, 35, of Mount Morris, Pa. He is stationed at Las Vegas’ Nellis Air Force base.

A military spokesman said Teagarden was testing the aircraft’s on-board electronic systems on a flight from Pittsburgh, Pa., to Nellis when the engine “flamed out” 15 miles south of Indianapolis at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The cause of the power failure had not been determined, the spokesman said.

After he radioed a “mayday” call to air traffic controllers, Teagarden steered his rapidly descending aircraft toward Indianapolis but came out of a cloud layer at too high an altitude to set down on the 10,000-foot main runway, airport director Robert Spitler said. He said controllers then told Teagarden to make a right turn and land on a perpendicular runway but lost him from their radar screens at 1,300 feet.

Looks for Vacant Field

In the turn, Teagarden’s speed apparently dropped and he lost control of the plane. Before he ejected from the aircraft he told controllers that he “had to get out and was looking for a vacant field.”

At 9:15 a.m. the pilotless plane scraped the top of the one-story Bank One branch office across busy Interstate 74 from the airport, caromed off a side street and plowed into the center of the hotel just above the lobby. Teagarden parachuted to safety, suffering only a muscle strain. He was treated and released at a hospital but could not be reached for comment.

Fire Department spokesman Gary Campbell said the explosion from the impact turned the hotel lobby into “a large vacant room with a lot of twisted metal.”

The plane, which Air Force officials said carried no weapons, bored at least 75 feet into the hotel, breaking into pieces that were no longer recognizable, Campbell said.

Jim McCue, director of operations for the airport, described the hotel as “one massive ball of fire and smoke” but said quick response by firefighters helped to extinguish the blaze and minimize casualties. He said the victims were killed by the impact and explosion, not by flames or smoke. “Those that were killed were killed immediately,” he said.

Identities Not Released

All of the dead were pulled from the wreckage of the hotel--some from the lobby and some from first-floor conference rooms. By nightfall, authorities had yet to release the identities of those killed.

Mechanic Ronnie Utterback, who looked up from under the hood of a car he was repairing just before the crash, said the accident was “the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The plane was so low and you could see him eject,” Utterback said. “You just knew what was going to happen next. . . . After it hit the lobby there was just nothing but a big ball of fire.”

Utterback said he saw “a man run out of the hotel totally afire and some guys rolled him around to put the fire out.”

Leland Hutchins, a civilian maintenance worker for the Navy, was attending a seminar in a first-floor conference room at the hotel when he heard an explosion and was blown out of his chair.

“I just ran out of the room and saw all the smoke and fire and bolted for an exit door. I just hoped it wasn’t locked ‘cause I was going full bore,” Hutchins recalled a few hours later as his pregnant wife clung to his side.

Jerry Gisbon, a salesman from Louisville, Ky., was supposed to meet a friend, John Cameron, for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, but Cameron was running late. So Gisbon checked out at 9:10 and headed for a convention in downtown Indianapolis. After the plane crashed minutes later, Cameron broke his second-floor guest room window with a chair and leaped to safety.

He was taken to a hospital and treated for cuts, bruises and smoke inhalation, and later was shocked to see Gisbon and other friends who had been staying at the hotel come in to check on him. “He thought we were in there, in the restaurant,” Gisbon said. “He thought we were dead.”

A base spokesman at Nellis, Master Sgt. Glenn Everett, said Teagarden is a 12-year Air Force veteran who had logged 2,085 flying hours. He is married and has two children, Everett said.

Cause Undetermined

Airport and Air Force officials said it was too early to determine why Teagarden’s plane developed engine trouble, why he bailed out or whether he had attempted to guide the diving plane away from a populated area. But Capt. Larry Jenkins, a spokesman for the Air Force Tactical Air Command in Langley, Va., said there were no “hard and fast” guidelines dictating when and how pilots should eject.

“Each situation is different for every aircraft system depending on a number of factors including aircraft altitude, air speed, configuration and equipment malfunction,” Jenkins said. “Until the pilot is debriefed on the complete details on his particular situation it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on the events surrounding his ejection.”

Jenkins described Teagarden’s flight as a test mission but said he flew to Pittsburgh--70 miles from his home--last Friday and left on the return leg of the flight Monday morning.

The small A-7s were last used as tactical fighter aircraft during the Vietnam War. Hundreds of the planes have been turned over to National Guard units but the Air Force maintains a squadron of 21 of the planes based at Nellis.

Air Force investigators said it would be at least two weeks before their investigation was completed. And Spitler said it was too early to determine how much control Teagarden had over the course of his aircraft during the final seconds of its descent.

“It is possible upon ejecting the aircraft that he had it aimed for open areas,” Spitler speculated. “ . . . But upon getting out (of the plane) it did not go there.”