LATE BREAKING NEWS: Plane With 48 Aboard Crashes in Buffalo

Friday, February 13, 2009 Last Update: 12:37 AM ET
Source The New York Times

Plane crashes into a house 4 miles from airport.

 

A plane burns after it crashed into a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., near Buffalo on Thursday night

A Continental Express flight from Newark to Buffalo crashed into a house about 4 miles from the Buffalo airport on Thursday night, according to a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

The plane carried 48 passengers and crew, said the spokesman, Ted Lopatkiewicz. He said he did not know if there had been any survivors, or any casualties on the ground. The plane went down in light snow, he said.

The Buffalo News, citing a source at the airport there, reported that 49 people — 44 passengers, 4 crew members and 1 on the ground — were killed.

Trooper John Manthey with the New York State Police in Clarence said the plane went down about 10:10 p.m., into a house in the hamlet of Clarence Center, striking a house.

The plane was a Dash 8, a two-engined turboprop, operated by Colgan Airways, as a feeder airline for Continental.

A Safety Board team of investigators will arrive in Buffalo on Friday morning, Mr. Lopatkiewicz said.

China Airlines Jet Explodes Upon Landing in Okinawa

Monday, August 20, 2007

TOKYO —  A China Airlines jet exploded into flames at an airport in Okinawa after arriving from Taiwan on Monday, but all 165 people aboard escaped alive, officials said. Police said terrorism was not suspected.

All 157 passengers — including two small children— fled the Boeing 737 unhurt on inflated emergency slides just minutes before the plane burst into a fireball, Transport Ministry official Akihiko Tamura told reporters.

China Airlines spokesman Sun Hung-wen told reporters in Taipei the aircraft skidded on the tarmac on its way from the runway to the gate after landing, starting a fire that prompted the emergency exit. The eight-member crew also safely left the plane, Sun said.

“The fire started when the first engine below the main left wing exploded, a minute after the aircraft entered the parking spot,” Tamura said.

Accounts of injuries were unclear. Tamura said one crew member had been hurt, but local fire official Hiroki Shimabukuro said two passengers — a 7-year-old girl and a man in his 50s — had been hospitalized because they didn’t feel well, not because of specific injuries.

Tamura put the number of passengers at 157, updating the figure of 155 initially provided by China Airlines.  [ Full Story  ]