Another Jet Drops Part on N.Y. Neighborhood

A 9-foot piece of a wing from a TWA Boeing 727 was found on a street Friday, a day and a half after a sizzling-hot engine part from another jetliner fell on another Queens neighborhood.

No injuries were reported in either incident.

The metal wing flap, 15 inches wide, apparently left gashes in the road in South Ozone Park, a residential neighborhood a mile from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Neighbors said they had heard a loud thud.

“I think maybe they need to start thinking about changing the route over these houses or they have to start hiring a better staff at the airlines,” said resident Lisa Mandel.

Trans World Airlines confirmed Friday the piece came off its Flight 782 from Orlando, Fla., which landed safely at Kennedy Airport at 11:27 p.m. EDT Thursday with 111 people aboard.

“The pilot told the maintenance guys after he landed that the plane was handling heavily,” said TWA spokesman John McDonald. An inspection of the plane uncovered the missing piece of the wing, he said.

Boeing spokeswoman Liz Verdier said a 727 could continue flying safely even after losing a wing flap.

“It doesn’t happen every day, but it is not an unheard-of occurrence,” she said. “It’s about as regular as a hub cap rolling off your tire.”

McDonald said the wing flap accounted for “one-sixth of one side of the flap assembly on the right side of the plane.”

Police said other metal parts were found in the area near the fallen flap.

On Wednesday night, at least one piece of a Delta Air Lines 727 engine fell onto a neighborhood in Flushing. The metal bounced off two houses and a car.

Engine failure forced the plane, which had taken off from La Guardia International Airport with more than 130 people aboard, to land at Kennedy.

Bill Berry, a Delta spokesman, said the engine experienced a failure in the turbine section. When that happens, he said, parts are designed to “easily be blown out of the exhaust part of the engine.”

In a similar incident, a fuel tank from an F-16 fighter jet crashed though the roof of a house in San Antonio on Thursday. Air Force officials said no one was injured.

Last month, two Delta passengers were killed when an engine failure hurled pieces of metal into the cabin as the MD-88 jet was taking off from Pensacola, Fla.