German Plane Crashes During Storm; 21 Die

A commuter airliner burst into flames and crashed during a storm today, killing all 21 people aboard in West Germany’s worst plane crash in 17 years, police said.

Witnesses said a lightning bolt struck the twin-engine turboprop airliner and that a wing fell off just before the aircraft crashed in a rural area near Muelheim, about seven miles north of Duesseldorf airport.

“There was a fireball in the air,” a police official said, describing eyewitness reports of the crash.

Police said airplane wreckage was scattered across a wide area.

Rescue workers said the bodies of the passengers, who were technicians and engineers from firms in the Ruhr area, had been badly mutilated and were almost impossible to identify.

Worst in 17 Years

It was West Germany’s worst plane crash in 17 years, according to the federal Aviation Administration in Braunschweig. In September, 1971, 21 people died when an airliner went down near Hamburg.

Federal flight authorities in Frankfurt said the plane was on a flight from Hanover to Duesseldorf.

Wilhelm Knittel, secretary for the Transportation Ministry, said the turboprop plane was just four miles from the runway of the Duesseldorf airport when it crashed.

Snow and rain squalls with gusty winds were moving through the region at the time of the crash, officials said.

Twin-Engine Turboprop

A spokesman for federal flight control authorities in Frankfurt, Hans-Ulrich Ohl, said the plane crashed at 7:57 a.m. local time.

He said the plane, a twin-engine turboprop FA-4 Metroliner, belonged to the Nuremberg Flight Service and had 19 passengers and a crew of two aboard at the time of the crash.

“The aircraft just disappeared from our radar screens without warning,” Ohl said.

He said the plane did not crash in a residential area.