February 13, 2009

All 48 passengers and crew, plus one person on the ground, have been killed after a passenger plane nosedived into a house near New York and exploded into a fireball.

In the first fatal crash involving a US commercial airliner for two and a half years, Continental Connection flight 3407 came down in Clarence Center, about five minutes before it was due to land at Buffalo, New York state.

The plane – a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 operated by Virginia-based Colgan Air – was on an internal flight from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, and was trying to land in light snow and fog at 10.20pm (0320 GMT) last night.

Recordings of audio exchanges between the control tower and pilot, released today on the internet, provide no clue about the reason for the crash and appear to indicate a sudden and unexpected plunge to the ground.

In the recorded exchanges, the female pilot can be heard reporting her position normally when requested by the local control tower. However, when at 2,300ft she then suddenly fails to respond any further and the flight disappears from radar screens.

As the tower made frantic efforts to contact her – including asking other pilots flying nearby to see if they could see the plane – the flight was plunging into the property in Clarence.

Dave Bissonette, the Clarence emergency control director, said: "It landed on the house, clearly a direct hit. It is remarkable that it is only one house. It could easily have wiped out the entire neighbourhood."

Chris Collins, the Erie County Executive, said that the first firefighters at the scene immediately began a search for bodies despite the soaring temperatures. "They were shouting out to see if there were any survivors on the plane. Truly a very heroic effort, but there were no survivors."

As the plane hit the house, the plane was said to have been carrying 5,000lb of fuel and burst into a fireball on impact, killing all 44 passengers and four crew on board, as well as one civilian believed to have been upstairs in the house.

In what appeared to have been an incredible escape, two others in the house at the time managed to flee the property.

The Buffalo News named the pair as Karen Wielinski, 57, and her daughter, Jill, 22, who the newspaper said were taken to Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and were in a stable condition. Reports suggested that they were on the ground floor at the time.

Recordings from the control tower leave the cause of the crash further shrouded in mystery.

After several seconds of apparently normal communications, the operator can be heard repeatedly trying to contact the pilot, and then asking the pilot of a nearby Delta Airlines plane to see whether he can see the Continental flight as well as others locally.

"We need to find out if anything's on the ground. This aircraft was five miles out, all of a sudden we have no response from that aircraft. All I can tell you is that we had an aircraft over the marker, and we're not talking to him now," the controller said.

Later, he tells all aircraft monitoring the same frequency: "We did have a Dash-8 over the marker that didn't make the airport."

Residents of Clarence – an affluent area with set-back, detached houses located around 10 miles from the airport – reported hearing the sound of a groaning, spluttering sound and then a massive bang.

Those looking outside could see flames climbing to between 50ft to 100ft high in the night's sky and a pile of rubble on the ground.

One person who heard the crash from about three-quarters of a mile away said it sounded like an earthquake. "The whole sky was lit up orange," Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile from the crash site, said. "There was a big bang, and the house shook."

As he went to look at the damage, he said he saw "50 to 100ft flames and a pile of rubble on the ground". He added: "It looked like the house just got destroyed the instant it got hit."

Another witness, Keith Burtis, told MSNBC: "It was almost like on TV where you hear this high pitched sound. It was like an earthquake. You could feel it. I'm downwind from it and the smoke and smell is still pretty strong."

Local emergency services this morning declared what was described as a limited state of emergency, with police completely closing off an area covering several blocks around the crash site.

Mr Bissonette said that the crash scene was, as yet, too hot to begin recovering survivors or carrying out serious investigations on the ground. Firefighters were still working on quelling the fire, he said, and investigations - including removing the bodies, and personal items relating to the dead - were unlikely to start today.

Laurie Bennett, of the FBI's Buffalo division, said that investigators were steering clear of the scene at present and allowing firefighters to do their work. Later, she said, they would enter the scene and collect the "loved ones that were lost and their personal effects".

The National Transportation Safety Board said that it was sending a team of crash investigators to the scene. There was believed to be no indication that terrorism was involved.

It was the first crash involving a commercial airliner in the US since August 27, 2006, when 49 people died when a Comair jetliner came off the runway in Lexington, Kentucky.

Philip Trenary, head of Colgan Air, held a press conference to apologise to the families of those who died. He said the plane was a 2008 model which had never before experienced any problems, and was unable to confirm whether the plane was running around two hours behind schedule.

"I do not think that there is anything I could say to the families (of those who died) that would ease their pain," he said. "You can say you are sorry. You can ask what you can do. That is the best I can do."

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