N.Y. Jet Explodes; 229 Aboard : Flight to Paris Plunges in Flames Into Ocean

A TWA jumbo jet bound for Paris with 229 people aboard lumbered into the night sky Wednesday and exploded into an orange fireball southeast of Long Island. Authorities said there were no signs of survivors.

Flight 800, a Boeing 747-100, plunged in flames into the Atlantic Ocean about 9 miles south of Moriches Inlet, near the east end of the island, at 8:40 p.m. EDT. Authorities said it carried 212 passengers, a cockpit crew of three and 14 flight attendants.

Eyewitnesses said the plane blew apart in the air. Several of the witnesses said they felt at least one concussion. Some said there were two explosions. The witnesses said they saw red and orange flames and black smoke, and that they watched pieces of the aircraft fall into the sea.

In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board dispatched investigators to New York. NTSB Chairman James Hall said the government did not know what caused the crash. Nicholas Burns, a State Department spokesman, said there was no reason to suspect that the explosion was the work of terrorists.

Before the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration had been placed on an increased level of security, said Mike Kelly, a vice president for Trans World Airlines. But he said it was because of the Olympic Games, which begin Friday in Atlanta. Kelly said there were no specific threats against TWA or against Flight 800.

At midnight EDT, more than three hours after the crash, the sea off Long Island was still covered with bright flames, some leaping 50 to 100 feet into the air. Several Coast Guard helicopters hovered close to the wreckage, flooding it with lights.

“We are not finding any survivors,” said Steve Sapp, a Coast Guard spokesman. “We are locating lots of bodies out there.” Rescuers told broadcast reporters that some of the bodies were badly burned.

The 747, an early model built in 1971, climbed into the clear sky over John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after 8 p.m., said Andrew Anderson, a spokesman for the New York/New Jersey Port Authority, which runs the airport. He said: “There was no indication of trouble given to anyone at Kennedy.”

The aircraft, with 29 passengers in first class and 183 in coach, then turned out and over the ocean, bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport. As it neared the east end of Long Island, it angled away from the south shore, about 40 miles east of New York City.

Suddenly, said Jill Saltzman, who was barbecuing with her family on West Hampton Beach, just east of Moriches Inlet, her children saw “a red flash of fire coming down in the ocean.

“We couldn’t imagine what it was,” Saltzman said.

A short time later, she said, her son “felt a shock from his feet to his thighs.” Saltzman said she and her family watched, transfixed by the spectacle, as “the flames funneled down into the ocean and then burst.”

Eileen Daly, another Long Island resident who saw the explosion, said she wondered at first what it was.

Then, she said, she realized: “Oh, my God, it’s an airplane!”

Daly told CNN that her 14-year-old son Tom watched in horror as an orange fireball filled the sky. She said he saw two pieces of the airplane fall into the water, which was shrouded in a light fog.

“I saw nothing but flames,” she added.

Phil Simone, also of Long Island, was out fishing when he saw the plane explode.

“I saw two spiraling orange fireballs,” he told a TV reporter. “We were probably 25 miles away, and the fireballs were large, even at that distance.

“This had to be a massive explosion,” Simone said. “The pieces came down like a hurricane, spinning out of the sky.”

Maureen Cassidy, a waitress serving dinner on the patio of a restaurant in South Hampton, told another reporter that she heard what she thought was a clap of thunder.

“There was a huge fireball,” she said. “It was just flames and black smoke and it was just pouring out of the sky.”

She said diners got up and ran to the edge of the patio. “They could see debris falling into the sea,” she said.

Robert Rosenblum saw the explosion from inside his home, not far away.

“My house was shaking,” he told CBS News.

Mike Gilligan was in his backyard with his son, who was playing on a gym set. “I looked up, and I saw what appeared to be a glowing ball,” Gilligan told a reporter. “It pulsed and it got brighter. Then it got less bright, and then it got brighter.

“Then it burst into the wildest fireworks display I have ever seen. [The plane] broke into two major pieces, and it just showered [down].”

Within seconds, Gilligan said, he heard “a major boom.”

Local firefighters were mobilized at the East Moriches fire station and waited for the rescuers to bring bodies ashore.

In accordance with a Suffolk County disaster plan, all surrounding municipalities sent ambulances to the Coast Guard station at East Moriches. New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said city police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel were sent into the area to help.

New York City also sent helicopters and 20 divers to the crash site.

The Coast Guard said that all of its available boats and aircraft were at the scene, including nine cutters, two helicopters and two planes.

Crews were using infrared night-vision goggles to help them spot bodies, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

All 110 people aboard that plane died when it fell into the Everglades.

The deadliest air disaster in U.S. history came in 1979 when a DC-10 crashed on takeoff at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, killing 273 people.

Times staff writers Barry Bearak and Geraldine Baum in New York and Jeff Leeds, Nieson Himmel, Miles Corwin and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

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What Witnesses Saw

1) Flame shoots from plane, “like a flare”

2) Plane drops for a few seconds

3) Plane burst into flames, then rotates around, disappears from radar screen at 8:40 p.m.

4) Smoke plume rises to about 7,500 feet

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ABOUT THE PLANE

Wing span: 211 feet

Length: 231 feet

Normal cruising altitude: 33,000 feet

* Bound for DeGaulle Airport in Paris

* 3 in cockpit crew

* 14 flight attendants

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RESCUE TEAM

Authorities divided the area into grids. Among units dispatched:

* 6 helicopters

* 4 Coast Guard cutters

* 1 C-130 Hercules transport

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TERRORIST FACTOR

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said U.S. officials “at this time have no reason to suspect terrorism” but were monitoring reports from the Federal Aviation Administration. In-air explosions can be caused by a variety of factors.

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THE WEATHER

Visibility at time of takeoff: Unrestricted

Winds: Southwest at 8 mph

Temperature: 82 degrees

Dew point: 69

Sources: Times staff and wire reports, WeatherData Inc.