Jet, 61 Aboard, Crashes in N.Y. River; 3 Killed

A USAir Boeing 737 jetliner crashed on takeoff Wednesday night at La Guardia Airport, broke into three pieces at the end of a runway and came to rest like a beached whale with its tail in the East River. At least three people were killed and 49 injured, three critically, police said.

Scores of passengers and crew from the 737-400, Flight 5050 bound for Charlotte, N.C., were rescued in fog and rain.

Divers, Ladders

They were taken by ladders reaching the wings of the aircraft, by scuba divers who searched the cold river water and by firemen who pulled them from pieces of a shattered dock broken apart by the impact of the plane.

At 1:50 this morning, Homer Bishop, chief of the New York City Fire Department, reported that all 55 passengers and six crew members had been removed from the aircraft.

Two parts of the plane fell into the river. One of the divers, Sgt. Jack Casey, of the New York Police Department, said he removed three bodies from the plane. Another diver, John Harvey, with New York Emergency Services, said all three bodies were covered with jet fuel.

About 30 occupants of the plane were brought to the Marine Air Terminal, west of the main terminal building. Most were wet. Emergency personnel distributed blankets, and the survivors wrapped themselves to keep warm. One was injured and taken to an ambulance.

Many shivered from shock and the cold river water.

It had rained heavily during the day and the runway was wet when the pilot aborted the takeoff about 11:35 p.m.

“We had a long roll taking off, and we couldn’t get up to speed,” said Kelly McCray, a management consultant on his way home to Charlotte. “We could feel vibrations in the nose. We made it about three-quarters of the way down the runway. The guy (pilot) realized we weren’t going to make it.

“At that point he cut power and reversed thrust on the engines. He got the speed down to 40 or 50 m.p.h. Then the nose went down in the water. There was not really a violent impact. The plane shuddered several times.”

McCray said he was in the first-class cabin and that a flight attendant told passengers there to leave the plane through a right side door. He said he slid down a chute and into the water.

He said he swam to safety.

Stephen Latham, a passenger from Spartanburg, S.C., said he and other survivors also slid down an emergency chute. He said they found a piece of wood from a piling that the aircraft had broken off into the water.

Latham said they used the wood as a raft.

‘Just Miraculous’

“It was just miraculous that we went down the chute and (the floating wood) was right at the bottom,” he said.

Two passengers, Larry and Valerie Martin of New York City, reported smoke in the cabin.

They said they were sitting in the fifth row when the plane went off the runway.

“Get off the plane!” they said flight attendants shouted.

Police said a third portion of the airplane ended up on dry land. It too was searched for survivors.

Many of the injured were taken to nearby Elmhurst General Hospital

Emergency Medical Service personnel reported that some of the passengers appeared to be in “pretty good condition.”

Police said at least one crew member was among those rescued.

New York City Police Emergency Services diver Larry Johnston, among the first on the scene, entered the plane in full diving suit and breathing apparatus. He said he and four others entered the plane to rescue a woman who was trapped by an overhead baggage rack that had fallen and by twisted metal from the wreckage.

The tail section of the plane was partially severed and filling with water at a rate of two inches per minute, Johnson said. He said rescuers had to act rapidly. He said they pried the woman from her seat with hydraulic jacks called the Jaws of Life. Johnson said the water was several feet deep by the time they left the mangled fuselage.

Passenger Tom Newberry, 27, of New York, was on his way to Wilmington, N.C., for his wedding when the plane went into the river. He said the pilot had very little success in braking because of water on the runway.

“We could tell we weren’t going to make it,” Newberry said. He was among a group of about 10 people who got on top of the makeshift raft that had been knocked loose from the pilings at the end of the runway.

“Everybody floated in 100 different directions,” he said. “The current was really something. The 10 of us held on to each other, and everybody tried to calm everyone down. Eventually everyone started joking around.”

Passengers were fearful the plane would fill with water before they could get out. Newberry praised flight attendants for keeping people calm.

Another survivor, Paul Lockwood, said: “I don’t know how I got out. I went to the front and slid out and the next thing I knew, I was in the water.”

A CBS News producer who happened to be a passenger spoke with his desk by portable phone.

“A lot of women and children were screaming that ‘we couldn’t swim,’ ” David Hawthorne told the network.

“One woman sitting in the tail section was seriously injured,” he said.

As officials set up a morgue at the airport, two Coast Guard helicopters began taking the injured to hospitals by air.

Staff writer Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this report.