Federal investigators arrived in Clarence Center today to examine the smoldering wreckage of a commercial plane that crashed into a home just after 10:15 p.m. Thursday, immolating the aircraft and home and killing 50 people.

The first task for the 14 investigators will be retrieving the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of the plane, which plunged into a home on Long Street.

Victims' bodies will also begin to be recovered from the site, with the aid of a medical examiner, said Steve Chealander, a National Transportation Safety Board member who arrived in the area early today to inspect the scene.

The dead include 49 passengers who were on board the plane and one man who was inside the home when the aircraft hit. They include "many" Buffalo-area residents, officials said.

Conditions at the scene will complicate the recovery effort, officials said.

"It's still very hot," said Chealander. "It was a major fire and explosion. There's a lot of carnage there."

The Continental Connection flight, No. 3407, had been headed into Buffalo from Newark when it suddenly fell from the sky and dived into a single-family house.

Onlookers -- and authorities -- were amazed that more homes were not destroyed.

"It's in that yard, basically," said Chealander. "It was a very compact area."

Eyewitnesses said the plane sounded odd before it crashed and seemed to strike directly into the home on Long Street.

"It was a bad, bad impact. It was hot, and the explosion was massive," said Clarence resident Tony Tatro, who was driving nearby at the time of the crash. "I couldn't see anyone surviving it."

The sickly glow from the burning wreckage could be seen for miles.

Names of the passengers on the plane were not being released immediately by the airline.

Gov. David A. Paterson planned to travel to the crash site today to inspect the scene personally.

The 50 dead included four on-duty crew members on the Continental plane, one off-duty crew member, as well as 44 people traveling toward Buffalo on business and pleasure trips.

Among the crash victims was Beverly Eckert, the widow of Sean Rooney, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Eckert was traveling to Buffalo for a family celebration of what would have been her husband's 58th birthday.

Family members and friends identified two people believed to be on the plane as Ellyce Kausner, a graduate of Clarence High School and Canisius College, and Maddy Loftus, a Buffalo State College graduate who lives in New Jersey.

The crew members were identified as Capt. Marvin Renslow, pilot of the plane; Rebecca Shaw, first officer of the flight; and flight attendants Matilda Quintero and Donna Prisco.

Another employee of the airline, Capt. Joseph Zuffoletto, a Jamestown resident who was off-duty at the time, was also killed.

The fiery crash -- which stunned onlookers by its intensity and heat -- is the deadliest U.S. airline crash since November 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 taking off from John F. Kennedy Airport.

Jaimeelynn Trujillo, a Clarence resident who lives directly behind the crash site and was evacuated by police in the moments after the crash, saw the immediate impact of the plane's hit first-hand and called it "horrifying."

She was also one of the few to see at least one of the occupants of the Long Street house -- the site where the plane crashed -- fleeing to safety.

LJ, I thought of you when I heard the news very late last night. I happened to be driving by my local airport last night & a B737 flew directly overhead & I thought, "Wow, I'm glad I'm not flying today because it's unusually windy today." But it looks like it was ice that brought this flight down. Very, very sad. This is the worst aircraft disaster since Nov. 2001.

Very sad to hear. My sympathies to the families and loved ones. Best wishes to hearty people in Buffalo. Unfortunately,no miracle this time.

i can't believe 2 people actually escaped from the house the plane crashed into, what a joke that must have been.

bless the dead and for the families, but you sit in an airplane seat after take off anything can happen. 

These things always happen in 3's right?

Flight crash-lands in London; 1 taken to hospital
    
LONDON – The nosewheel of a British Airways passenger jet collapsed with a loud bang as it landed Friday at London City Airport, sending the plane scraping across the tarmac with 71 people aboard, officials and witnesses said. All aboard escaped by emergency slides, but one person was taken to a hospital with a minor injury.

BA Flight 8456 was flying from Amsterdam to London when its front landing gear failed.

"As a precaution the emergency slides were deployed and passengers were evacuated down the slides onto the runway," the airline said in a statement. "One passenger suffered a minor injury."

The airline said the Avro 146 RJ100 — made by BAE Systems — was carrying 67 passengers and four crew.

London firefighters said the plane crashed onto the runway around 8 p.m. (2000 GMT, 3 p.m. EST), and ambulance officials reported that four people were treated for minor injuries.

One of the passengers, Justin Fletcher, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that "there was obviously quite a loud bang as the plane scratched in. The stewards and stewardesses were quick to evacuate everyone off. There was a few scrapes and cuts due to hitting the asphalt. All in all everyone seems to be doing quite well now."

Passengers and crew were taken into the airport straight after the accident to be treated, and to be given food and drink.

The airport's only runway was closed after the incident and planes were being diverted to other airports in southeast England.

The government sent three investigators to the scene. The plane remained on the runway Friday evening, surrounded by fire trucks and maintenance crews.

London City Airport, in the eastern part of the British capital, is mainly used for domestic and European flights. It handles around 80,000 flights a year, with just over 3 million passengers. The airport is surrounded by water and aviation experts say pilots often experience difficult landings on the runway.

The crash-landing in London came a day after a commuter plane nose-dived into a suburban house in upstate New York, killing all 49 people aboard and one person in the home

Sometimes it makes me wonder..... 
So Sad,
Maybe human beings are taking to many things for granted! 
I guess i just feel bad,
We were without electric for 18 hours because of high winds and sleet.
I could have been worse.
Some people had no water.
Then a plane crashes with 49 dead,
Ice on the wings  :{

I've just heard about it. So sad for everyone involved, so many unlucky coincidences and such a tragedy... 
Hope there wasn't anyone you knew in it LJ 

Now it appears as if some rules might have been "broken". The plane was on auto-pilot when it went down... Much harder to detect problems than if a human is actually flying the plane...

Yeah, I can't imagine either. Even if they weren't landing yet, they were in a totally populated area, and you know the plane was flying low.....what a tragic mistake.

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Yeah, but those conditions must happen all the time around this time of year, all over the northern hemisphere, so why did this particular plane go down?

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aren't these planes like one of a kind?  as far as i know there aren't that many built, other than say for scenic flights you can hire for an hour [say to fly over whiteface mtn and over lake placid]  i thought they were a thing of the past.

left shoe shuffle wrote on Feb 16^th, 2009 at 2:12pm:


i understand that...i was just thinking prop planes.

i flew in a 2 seater prop plane a few years ago, the craft was fluttering all over the place.