265 Die in N.Y. Jet Crash; Mechanical Fault Probed

An American Airlines jet en route to the Dominican Republic broke apart and crashed into a seaside residential neighborhood Monday after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing at least 265 people.

“Everything we know to date says that this continues to be an accident investigation,” said Marion C. Blakey, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation. A senior Bush administration official added that, “as of now, it’s looking like it’s not a terrorist attack” but said that such a possibility could not be ruled out.

The A300 Airbus, which rolled over and dived less than three minutes after a 9:14 a.m. EST takeoff, plunged into Belle Harbor, a tranquil Queens community. American Airlines said 260 people were aboard the jetliner. From six to nine residents in the neighborhood were missing. As of late Monday, authorities said 265 bodies had been recovered. Four homes were destroyed and eight others were damaged.

Federal investigators said the pilot didn’t indicate any distress before the plane crashed. New York Gov. George Pataki noted there were conflicting reports about whether the pilot had dumped fuel into nearby Jamaica Bay, which might indicate that he knew of a mechanical failure.

Several hours after the crash, the plane’s flight data recorder was recovered and was sent to Washington.

As news of the catastrophe swept over New York on Monday morning, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani quickly sought to reassure residents still jittery from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center. “It’s important to remain calm,” he said. Many New Yorkers initially feared the city was under attack again. “We are strong people in this city and we are going to get through this,” Giuliani said.

Officials said it was amazing that the plane didn’t cause more serious damage in Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula, which juts from the mainland of New York City, 15 miles from Manhattan. Eyewitnesses said they heard an explosion and saw the plane’s left engine catch fire shortly after takeoff. The main section of the jet plunged into several homes; part of a wing and tail fell into the bay and one of the engines plunged into a Texaco gas station, narrowly missing the fuel pumps.

The debris rained down on a neighborhood of old wooden and brick homes that has long been a magnet for retirees but is now a residential community that includes police officers and firefighters as well as Wall Street employees. Moments after the crash, stunned residents fled their homes.

Orange flames quickly engulfed more than a dozen structures, with black smoke visible for miles. Although firefighters were able to put out the blazes quickly, there was little hope for survivors.

“Anyone who was in those four houses that were directly hit by that fuselage, where that severe fire was, I don’t think they’re going to be alive,” said New York Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen. But he cautioned that city officials were not certain that anyone was in the homes.

Minutes after Flight 587 went down, New York shifted into a state of high alert, closing all bridges and tunnels into the city, shutting down the area’s three main airports, halting bus traffic out of town and evacuating the Empire State Building. All but the Empire State Building reopened hours later as the tension eased.

Hundreds of flights, mainly in the Eastern United States, were delayed or canceled. Many incoming planes were diverted to alternate cities.

Despite the most intense security in its history, the United Nations suddenly seemed vulnerable. Officials immediately shut the U.N.’s doors, interrupted diplomatic conferences and kept foreign dignitaries waiting behind police barricades outside the landmark building.

President Bush canceled morning meetings to focus on the tragedy and voiced sympathy for the victims of New York’s latest disaster. Aides said he would keep his appointments this week with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

Bush’s top advisors immediately met via teleconference to run through what they knew. FBI officials huddled in the same war room in Washington that was used to track the hijackings two months earlier. And investigators scoured the flight manifest for passenger names that might have surfaced in the Sept. 11 investigation.

In New York, investigators began pursuing several terrorism-related theories, including a hijacking, a bomb, or mechanical sabotage that could have caused an engine to fall off. But no immediate evidence surfaced to support any of those theories, officials said, and none of the passengers on the flight manifest had any known links to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The crash devastated the Dominican community, the city’s fastest-growing ethnic group, because many of those on the flight to Santo Domingo were Dominicans. The community had already lost 41 of its members in the World Trade Center attacks, and “now this latest tragedy is overwhelming,” said Guillermo Linares, the New York councilman who represents the Washington Heights section where many Dominicans live.

In Santo Domingo, deafening cries of sorrow echoed through the airport Monday as relatives awaiting the plane’s arrival collapsed in grief after being told that Flight 587 crashed shortly after takeoff in New York.

“Not the child, please not the child!” sobbed Germania Brito, who had gone to the airport to meet her sister and her husband and their 2-year-old son. “May God help us all.”

Monday’s disaster also brought new tragedy to the Rockaways, which was home to at least 75 of the World Trade Center victims, including police officers, firefighters and civilians. About 30 people from Belle Harbor, a waterfront community in the Rockaway area, were lost in the attacks.

“It just can’t get any worse, it can’t, and then it does,” said Queens firefighter John Gaine, who had been working on rescue operations at the World Trade Center. “A couple of fire companies started screaming over the radio about a crash, and I said, ‘No, God, no,’ and raced out there. At the scene, there was a big hole in the ground. I saw bodies all burned up.”

As they stood watching the fires from the plane crash, residents couldn’t stop talking about the new horror. Nearly every weekend since Sept. 11, the local Roman Catholic church, St. Frances de Sales, has overflowed with mourners. There was a funeral Mass scheduled for today for a local man who was lost in the rubble. But the air crash, only a few yards from the church, disrupted that plan.

On a clear, cold morning, Belle Harbor residents said they were jarred by the sound of a plane flying low over the neighborhood. There was an immense explosion, they said, followed by wreckage falling from the sky.

People poured into the streets, shouting for neighbors to flee their homes. Within minutes, scores of firetrucks and other vehicles flooded the neighborhood, causing massive traffic jams.

“The whole house shook, and then there was a tremendous crash,” said Marjoree Riordan, who lives three blocks from where the plane went down. “An old man in the street yelled, ‘Get out of the house!’ And when I looked in the back of the house, I saw flames. A small piece of the plane came floating down in front of me and then it landed on the sidewalk.”

By late evening, rescue crews and investigators were still combing the wreckage, separating household items, such as pieces of furniture and kitchen dishes, from small pieces of the plane. Klieg lights, like those used at the World Trade Center site, illuminated the ghostly scene.

As news of the crash spread, families and friends of victims rushed to an assistance center set up at a hotel near the airport. More than 150 Red Cross workers gathered at the site and offered grief counseling.

“These families, as you might expect, are extremely upset, distraught and shocked,” said Dr. Susan Hamilton of the Red Cross’ aviation disaster team. “Many are in disbelief that such a thing could have happened so suddenly. Many came here after saying goodbye to their family members just a few hours ago at the airport, and they are clearly in a state of shock.”

Donald Carty, chief executive of American Airlines, said the pain of yet another loss--two of the airline’s planes were lost in the Sept. 11 hijackings--”is very, very hard to absorb, for us and the victims. We will be offering immediate financial assistance to victim’s families and coordinating assistance with teams here in New York and in Santo Domingo.”

“Given the changed world we live in, it is very important that we understand the reason for what caused this immediately.”

The NTSB quickly sent an investigative team to New York, accompanied by Blakey. And the fact that it has been made the lead agency--and not the FBI, which is also on the scene--indicates that federal officials are proceeding on the theory that the crash was an accident.

Blakey noted that a review of the plane’s maintenance records initially found “nothing indicative of a specific problem.” The Airbus A300 has experienced some mechanical problems in the past, but neither the plane itself nor the engines it used, the General Electric CF6-80C2, have been associated with fatal accidents, records indicate.

Officials urged New Yorkers to be patient while the cause of the crash is determined. But few could maintain a stoic response to the day’s events.

Giuliani said his first thought upon hearing about the crash was “ ‘Oh, my God.’ I just passed the church in which I’ve been to, I think, 10 funerals here. Rockaway was particularly hard hit” in the trade center disaster, he said. “You can’t have enough compassion for these people.”

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Times staff writers Janet Wilson, William Orme and John J. Goldman in New York; and Josh Meyer, Eric Lichtblau, Robert L. Jackson and Richard O’Reilly in Washington contributed to this report.