Laura48
01-08-2003, 1:44pm
Plane was bound from Charlotte to Greenville-Spartanburg
Wednesday, January 8, 2003 Posted: 12:16 PM EST (1716 GMT)
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (CNN) -- A US Airways Express/Air Midwest commuter plane crashed on takeoff, after clipping a hangar Wednesday at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, bursting into a ball of fire and killing 19 passengers and two crew members.
"There are no survivors," said Jerry Orr, airport operations director. He said ground workers near the site all had been accounted for and were not among the dead.
Orr said the crash happened shortly after takeoff. "The plane was unable to maintain altitude," he said, "and clipped the corner of the US Airways hanger building," causing an intense fire that was quickly extinguished.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was US Airways Express/Air Midwest Flight 5481 and was on its way to the Greenville-Spartanburg airport -- about 100 miles away in South Carolina.
Flight 5481 took off at 8:45 a.m. EST and was due to arrive at 9:15 a.m. EST, officials said.
Greenville-Spartanburg Interational Airport spokeswoman Rosylin Weston told reporters that a center had been set up for victims' friends and relatives who might be arriving to pick up passengers from the flight.
The Charlotte airport was closed for a time after the crash, but Orr said it was soon reopened. He said the hangar suffered relatively minor damage from the accident, and that the airport is setting up a center for family members of victims.
He added that at this point he has no information as to the cause of the crash. A go-team from the National Transportation Safety Board is en route to the scene.
Conditions were clear, cold and windy at the time of the crash, with visibility of more than 10 miles.
"The plane is so destroyed there's really not much left to be able to see or to be able to determine exactly what kind of aircraft it was," said Charlotte police spokesman Keith Bridges.
Witnesses said plumes of gray smoke could be seen rising from a hangar after the crash. "I heard a splutter noise," said witness Tommy Stacey. "I saw a plane going straight up into the air, then all of a sudden it went into a nose dive ... and I saw it crash into a ball of fire."
Allen Wright, a passenger who flew into the airport shortly after the crash, told The Charlotte Observer that passengers on his flight saw the cloud of smoke as their plane was taxiing to the terminal. "You don't want to imagine that could happen," he said. "Nobody wanted to think that it might be a crash."
The FAA said the aircraft is a Beech 1900D, a turboprop aircraft. The airlines' Web site says it operates as US Airways Express/Air Midwest.
The crash comes some 14 months after the last commercial airline fatalities in the United States, federal officials said.
The last incident with fatalities was the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in New York on November 12, 2001, in which 265 people died.
The airline's hub is in Kansas City, Missouri. Headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, Air Midwest also has hubs in Kansas City; Tampa, Florida; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0301/gallery.nc.planecrash/gallery.amateur.video.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0301/gallery.nc.planecrash/gallery.crash.smoke.wcnc.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/South/01/08/plane.crash/story.plane.crash.wcnc.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0301/gallery.nc.planecrash/gallery.crash.side.wcnc.jpg
Source (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/South/01/08/plane.crash/index.html)
Wednesday, January 8, 2003 Posted: 12:16 PM EST (1716 GMT)
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (CNN) -- A US Airways Express/Air Midwest commuter plane crashed on takeoff, after clipping a hangar Wednesday at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, bursting into a ball of fire and killing 19 passengers and two crew members.
"There are no survivors," said Jerry Orr, airport operations director. He said ground workers near the site all had been accounted for and were not among the dead.
Orr said the crash happened shortly after takeoff. "The plane was unable to maintain altitude," he said, "and clipped the corner of the US Airways hanger building," causing an intense fire that was quickly extinguished.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was US Airways Express/Air Midwest Flight 5481 and was on its way to the Greenville-Spartanburg airport -- about 100 miles away in South Carolina.
Flight 5481 took off at 8:45 a.m. EST and was due to arrive at 9:15 a.m. EST, officials said.
Greenville-Spartanburg Interational Airport spokeswoman Rosylin Weston told reporters that a center had been set up for victims' friends and relatives who might be arriving to pick up passengers from the flight.
The Charlotte airport was closed for a time after the crash, but Orr said it was soon reopened. He said the hangar suffered relatively minor damage from the accident, and that the airport is setting up a center for family members of victims.
He added that at this point he has no information as to the cause of the crash. A go-team from the National Transportation Safety Board is en route to the scene.
Conditions were clear, cold and windy at the time of the crash, with visibility of more than 10 miles.
"The plane is so destroyed there's really not much left to be able to see or to be able to determine exactly what kind of aircraft it was," said Charlotte police spokesman Keith Bridges.
Witnesses said plumes of gray smoke could be seen rising from a hangar after the crash. "I heard a splutter noise," said witness Tommy Stacey. "I saw a plane going straight up into the air, then all of a sudden it went into a nose dive ... and I saw it crash into a ball of fire."
Allen Wright, a passenger who flew into the airport shortly after the crash, told The Charlotte Observer that passengers on his flight saw the cloud of smoke as their plane was taxiing to the terminal. "You don't want to imagine that could happen," he said. "Nobody wanted to think that it might be a crash."
The FAA said the aircraft is a Beech 1900D, a turboprop aircraft. The airlines' Web site says it operates as US Airways Express/Air Midwest.
The crash comes some 14 months after the last commercial airline fatalities in the United States, federal officials said.
The last incident with fatalities was the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in New York on November 12, 2001, in which 265 people died.
The airline's hub is in Kansas City, Missouri. Headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, Air Midwest also has hubs in Kansas City; Tampa, Florida; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0301/gallery.nc.planecrash/gallery.amateur.video.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0301/gallery.nc.planecrash/gallery.crash.smoke.wcnc.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/South/01/08/plane.crash/story.plane.crash.wcnc.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0301/gallery.nc.planecrash/gallery.crash.side.wcnc.jpg
Source (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/South/01/08/plane.crash/index.html)