Witnesses say engine fell off as plane burst into flames

6.50 am - UPDATED REPORT

NEW YORK - An American Airlines jet with 255 people aboard crashed in a nosedive this morning shortly after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport, ploughing through nearby homes and sending new fears through a city still jittery from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Already on high security alert since the World Trade Center attacks that killed some 4,300 people, officials sealed off all bridges and tunnels into the city, closing vehicle traffic, and shut down all area airports.

Flight 587, an Airbus A-300, was bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and was scheduled to take off at 8:48 a.m. The crash occurred at 9:17 am (3.17 am NZ time), according to police.

There was no immediate indication of the cause or whether the city's fears of further attack had come true. The crash came just two months and a day after two hijacked passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers.

"The airports have been closed, and just as a precaution we are going to close the bridges and tunnels for an hour or two to see if this is an isolated incident, which we hope it is," said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who headed to the scene.

"The rest of the city is on high alert," he said. "At this point we have no reason to believe that there will be anything else but this, but at the same time we are sensible and we understand what happened before so for a while the city is going to be on an even higher state of security."

The plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members, according to American Airlines. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing an engine fall off the plane, which was on fire. Then, they said, the plane plunged nose first into the residential neighbourhood of the Queens borough.

Dark clouds of smoke billowed over the neighbourhood, where houses could be seen burning. Scores of firefighters were on the scene.

Retired firefighter Tom Lynch, who lives in neighbourhood, said he saw what appeared to be the plane exploding and one of its wings fall off.

"It definitely exploded in the sky," he said. "It wasn't that loud. ... I saw a whoof, a flame, and looked like a wing falling off the airplane and it nosedived right down."

An American Airlines spokesman said the aircraft was a French-built Airbus A300, one of 35 owned by American Airlines. The twin engined plane went into service in July 1988. It had a major overhaul in December 1999 and its next overhaul was scheduled for July 2002.

The FBI said there was no indication this crash was a terrorist attack. "Right now we don't believe it is (a terrorist incident) because we don't have any information indicating that it is," said FBI spokeswoman Tracy Ballinger.

"No determination has been made," said FAA spokesman Bill Shumann. "There is no indication now that it was a criminal act."

Giuliani said upon hearing the news, his first thought was "Oh my God."

"We are just being tested one more time and we are going to pass this test too," Giuliani said.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police said all three New York area airports -- Kennedy, Newark International Airport and La Guardia -- were shut down.

Smoke could be seen from as far away as Manhattan, and power and telephones were knocked out in the neighbourhood.

News of the crash prompted higher security responses not only around the city but around the nation.

UN security chief Michael McCann announced that authorities sealed off the United Nations compound, but the complex was not evacuated.

Osama bin Laden, blamed by Washington for masterminding suicide airliner attacks on the United States, said in a recent message that the United Nations was anti-Muslim and had thrown its weight behind the US bombing of Afghanistan.

In Washington, President Bush postponed a meeting he had scheduled with reporters ahead of his summit with Russian President Putin

The Empire State Building, New York City's tallest building since the collapse of the twin towers, was evacuated and closed as a precaution, a spokeswoman said.

Marine Corps Maj. Ben Owens, a spokesman at the Pentagon in Washington, said the US military received no advance warning of a problem aboard the airliner before it went down.

Owens said the Colorado-based North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) had no indication that the plane was about to crash.

NORAD coordinates dozens of US Air Force fighter jets that have been on increased "homeland defense" alert around the country since Sept. 11.

Stocks fell sharply and the dollar tumbled immediately after news of the crash. The bond market was closed.

- REUTERS

* The New Zealand Herald will publish a special edition today with updated coverage of the New York city plane crash. This special edition will be on sale in Auckland and main provincial cities at midday.

Complete coverage

Map of crash area

American Airlines information (from within NZ):
0168 1 800 245 0999