Swissair Jet Crashes Off the Coast of Nova Scotia

A Swissair jetliner bound from New York to Geneva with 228 people aboard crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the Canadian coast late Wednesday as it tried to make an emergency landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Although a spokesman for the Canadian Rescue Service said “patients” were being brought ashore, he declined to state their condition or confirm early reports of some survivors.

According to ship-to-shore radio reports from the scene, more than a dozen private fishing boats joined ships from the Canadian navy and coast guard in a search for survivors at the crash site about seven miles off Peggy’s Cove, a fishing village with a picturesque lighthouse that is a popular tourist attraction.

Two helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft also were dispatched, and more than 20 ambulances from throughout the province of Nova Scotia gathered in coastal towns to take any survivors to hospitals. All together, more than 300 emergency personnel were involved in the effort.

Canadian authorities said the flight was Swissair 111, an MD-11 out of John F. Kennedy International Airport carrying 214 passengers and 14 crew members. The Canadian Press said the pilot radioed a distress call of smoke in the cockpit and requested an emergency landing at Halifax. After dumping fuel into the ocean, however, the plane disappeared off radar screens shortly before 11 p.m. local time.

The sea was described as relatively calm with swells up to 6 feet, and the sky was overcast but visibility was reasonably good, said Grant Lingley, spokesman for the Canadian Emergency Health Services.

Residents of nearby Blandford said they heard a low-flying plane and then a loud noise.

“We heard the plane go over our home, then my husband and son heard quite an explosion,” Audrey Bachman told the Associated Press.

“I heard an enormous noise . . . and then, bang,” added Blandford resident Mieke Martin.

An unidentified woman told Canadian television that many planes pass over her house, which is in the flight path for Halifax. “This one didn’t sound right at all,” she said. “Eventually we heard this explosion, but when we went outside, we didn’t see any flames.”

Because the flight originated in the United States, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to the site, Reuters news agency said. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said President Clinton was informed of the crash shortly before leaving Russia for Ireland.

“We’re aware of the report,” he said. “The White House is seeking additional information.”

Swissair set aside a lounge at Kennedy International airport for family members of those on board.

Halifax is a major Canadian naval and search and rescue center with a long seafaring tradition. Vessels were dispatched from the port to the site of the Titanic’s sinking in 1912, and dozens of victims of that tragedy are buried in a cemetery there.

Because the plane departed from Kennedy International, the joint FBI/New York Police Department anti-terrorist task force automatically would be involved in any investigation.

And following the pattern of TWA Flight 800, which plunged into the Atlantic on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people aboard, one of the first tasks would be to activate the command post in the FBI’s New York field office to coordinate what certainly will be an extensive inquiry.

Kennedy International has been under extremely tight security since two suspects in the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were returned to New York to face trial.

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Turner reported from New York, Van Velzen from Toronto. Times staff writer John J. Goldman in New York contributed to this story.