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On Fox 5 NY a man named Kenneth Brown said this to Rosanna ? and John ?

John: Ken, you there?

Ken, yes yes I am.

John: Can you tell us what you saw Ken?

Ken: Alright, I was out on the boat about a hundred twentieth a hundred nineteenth st when un we stopped the boat cause we have an engine..yah know the engine was making weird sounds, so we stopped the boat and we were back by the engine and I heard a popping sound...not like a a a I cant even say it was an explosion, it was more like a pop and then like a whishing sound and then part of the wing came off.

John:Where was the plane at that moment?

Ken: Right over the bay. Right over the bay

John So is it almost right above you?

Ken: Yes, kinda to the north of us, cause we where more to the east channel drive at that time, on that side of Jamaica Bay and um the pieces that came off the wing...flew into the um tail and tore the tail off and as soon as that happened the plane went belly up towards us and towards the east and it just dove straight down, like the uhh the belly of the plane actually turned toward the south and it went straight down into the ground.

John: So you saw some big pieces of this plane come off...

Ken:We was the first ones on the scene and then the police boat came and we helped them pick up parts of the boat..uh..parts a the plane. We actually took up the blue A off of the tail we put that in the boat. Ummm the picture of the....another piece of the whole top of the tail with the flag on it was laying in shallow water. We took up allot of pieces of the boat...the plane we put it on the boat and took them in to the police boat an helped load em onto the police boat but a a the engine

Rosannabreaks in: Well it sounds like you have some crucial information Ken...

His voice rising Ken says: See the engine...everybody keeps saying the engine fell off...if it fell off it fell off on the way down....

John:U Huh

Ken: That plane as soon as its tail came off it just bellied up and went straight down, so yah know people saying yah know the engine came off, but that came off after the fact. Now as far as explosion, something was happening over the bay, something made the wing shatter and took of the tail. and uh the way I seen it , it still looked like it had its engines on as it was going down.

John: Have you spoken to anyone there uh Ken have you talked to any members of the..

Ken Yeh a yeh police I gave the police a guy in a police boat my name and all that and when I was helping em with ya know the parts of the plane

Woman Ken you sound very shacking up , I'm sure this has..

Ken: I'm still shacking, its a its just a terrible sight. Ya know its something ya see on a movie Ya know how the plane..ya just just knew it..that it wouldn't, as it was going down I was saying hit the ocean hit the ocean thinking ya know maybe it cleared, its only 4 blocks wide but the plane just turned over and came straight down. It was..its a sight to see..it was ya know stunned me

Woman Were you able to keep your composure and think clearly at that point?

Ken: Yes, actually actually the things was starting to fly down toward the boat so we backed up a little bit toward the the trestles the A train trestle and then we came back to see if they was any...ah cause at one time I thought I could see a seat but I wasn't even sure, Nothing heavy came down, everything floated down

Woman: Do you think you got everything that was in the water?

Ken Mostly everything that was floating yah. Cause a the police boat came like the within 5 minutes..3 minutes maybe but that plane was gone in 6 seconds, when I heard the popping sound and seen the flames seen the uh wing hit the back tail an that came off it couldn't a been more than 3 seconds for it was down

John: So your saying the wing came off and hit the tail?

Ken: Parts yes...the whole section of the tail was what we recovered. The A the little flag on the top of the tail section that whole section, like the 30 foot top of that was stuck in the sand...in the water about 5 feet of water but there was other pieces floating around..as a matter of fact I took the blue A and we pulled that part on the boat and brought it over to the police boat. They was asking for our help then allot of boats came by allot of police boats

John:Nick your sitting hearing what Ken is saying that if any any questions for him?

Nick Well um it sounds like Ken is your describing is a again that something exploded uh to cause these pieces of the wing to come out. Is that what you sug..

Ken: Exactly something happened to that wing that sent pieces of it back to the tail.

John was it the left wing or the right wing Ken do ya know?

Ken ahh see now like my friend..well.. a it bellied up to me and a when it bellied up to the east it a looked like the right wing cause the left wing still looked intact to me. It looked like the right wing had come off..or part of it

John: well that would fit with what the

(over talk..engine..saying..?)Nick: Unnn but again Ken Kinda saying the engine fell off after the fact but still potentially the engine exploding could could cause pieces of the engine to fly I mean what may have happened was a a series of events where pieces if the engine actually flew back and struck the tail or even that pieces of the engine and the wing at the same time so a but a Kens observations of the tail is a very interesting clue

John Do you live around there Ken?

Ken Yes, I live in Hamilton beach right off Jamaica Bay and a thats the whole thing..That plane would have went over Rockaway cause it was still like level until the tail came off and then it just bellied up and spun around and came straight down uh otherwise it would..that tail..as soon as it shattered thats when the plane lost everything

Nick: Now Ken did you see actual flames coming out of an engine that was..?

Ken: There was flames on the belly of the plane..I don't know weather it was the engine or ya know, but the plane bellied up towards us as it was going down and flames in the a..in that vicinity of the engines or whatever like underneath the plane

Well Ken we a thank you for your time

Ken: No Problem

Officials: Crash Likely an Accident
By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press Writer
November 12, 2001, 4:15 PM EST
WASHINGTON -- An accident rather than terrorism probably caused an American Airlines jet to plunge into a neighborhood in New York, federal officials said Monday. Investigators focused on an engine that fell away from the doomed plane.
The investigators swiftly reviewed the plane's maintenance records, but initially found "nothing indicative of a specific problem," said director Marion Blakey of the National Transportation Safety Board. Officials located the flight data recorder and rushed it to the nation's capital for analysis.
"All information we have currently is that this is an accident," said Blakey, as the Bush administration sent experts to the scene.
While the crash was horrific -- the plane carried 255 people to their deaths, and wreckage set several homes on fire in Queens _ the preliminary assessment seemed a relief of sorts for a nation struggling to recover from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and an outbreak of mail-spread anthrax.
President Bush was handed a note informing him of the crash moments after it occurred, and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge moved quickly to the White House Situation room to confer by telephone with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and others. Officials gave some consideration to shutting down the nation's air travel system, as was done after the September attacks in New York and Washington, but decided against it after sifting through the available information.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said at the White House there had been no unusual communications between the cockpit and air traffic officials on the ground. He also said there had been no credible threats against airplanes in advance of the crash.
Fleischer declined to rule out terrorism but said he would not dispute the assessment of other officials who had said privately there was no preliminary evidence that terrorists had been involved.
Blakey made her comments a short while later.
The president spoke by phone with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki. In a remarkable sign of the times, Giuliani said he had asked the president for "air cover" to protect his wounded city.
Blakey said debris fell over a wide area of Queens, a few miles from the airport where Dominican Republic-bound American Airlines Flight 587 plane took off. She noted there were reports of some wreckage recovered in Jamaica Bay.
Witnesses said there may have been an explosion on board the plane.
"It's too early for me to advance theories on this," Blakey said. But she noted in response to a question that engine parts were scattered "some distance from the actual crash crater."
At least one of the engines, believed to be from the right side, fell intact on a gas-station parking lot. American Airlines said the left engine on Flight 587 was freshly overhauled and the right engine was about due for maintenance after nearly 10,000 hours of operation.
General Electric Aircraft Engines, the Cincinnati-based subsidiary of General Electric Co., sent two experts to the crash site to assist federal investigators. GE manufactured the CF6-80C2 jet engines -- the same model as those installed on Air Force One _ that were mounted on the underside of each wing of the doomed flight.
"There are eyewitness reports that they saw the engine on fire and it reportedly landed in a separate place from the main body of the wreckage," said Susan Coughlin, a former vice chairwoman for the NTSB and now chief operating officer of American Trucking Associations Foundation. "That would certainly prompt the investigators to figure out why."
A Chicago-based lawyer, Tom Ellis of the Nolan Law Group, said photographs of the surviving engine showed "pretty clear evidence of an uncontained engine failure." His firm sued on behalf of victims of United Airlines Flight 232, which crashed in 1989 in Sioux City, Iowa, after an earlier version of the CF6 engine came apart in flight. So-called "uncontained engine failures" can result in an explosion of metal fragments as damaging as shrapnel from a bomb.
Earlier this year, on May 18, a problem with the same type of engine forced the emergency landing of a Monarch Airlines passenger jet in Portugal. Documents from the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch said a rotor blade snapped, puncturing the engine's housing with a 3-inch hole and causing minor damage to the wing. The pilots reported dramatic vibration, and British officials reported there had been "several similar failures prior to this event."
The FAA ordered airlines in June to begin regularly inspecting these types of engines for cracks in certain rotor disks, a component within the engines, after the dramatic failure of one engine when maintenance crews set it to high power during testing on the ground.
Last year, the FAA also ordered airlines to replace a fuel tube within these engines to prevent high-pressure leaks that investigators warned could result in an engine fire and damage to the airplane. Also last year, the FAA ordered carriers to remove certain fan shafts within these engines earlier than planned to prevent possible catastrophic failure.
GE spokesman Rick Kennedy said American completed all these inspections and repairs. "Airworthiness directives" from the FAA mandating such repairs are relatively common.
GE has built 2,954 of these engines -- first introduced in 1984 _ and they are among the best-selling for wide-bodied aircraft. Kennedy called the CF6 engines "phenomenally reliable," and said they have been installed on more than 1,000 planes worldwide.
___
Associated Press writer Jonathan D. Salant contributed to this report.<
(PROFILE (CO:AMR Corporation; TS:AMR; IG:TRV;) (CO:General Electric Co; TS:GE; IG:IDD;) )
Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press

A still from Fox-5 television news shows what witnesses say is the Airbus' engine after it fell
from an American Airlines Airbus A-300 passenger jet into a service station in Queens, New
York November 12, 2001. The White House said it was too soon to say what caused the
crash in New York of the airliner with 255 people on board. (WNYW FOX-5 via Reuters)

A jet engine from American Airlines flight 587 lies amid houses that it crashed into several
blocks from site where the rest of the plane crashed November 12, 2001 in the Rockaway
section of Queens, New York. Normal flight operations at two of the three major New York-
area airports resumed several hours after an American Airlines jet crashed shortly after takeoff
Monday from John F. Kennedy International Airport. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

A large section of the tailpiece of American Airlines Flight 587 is lifted off a boat by a crane
after the Airbus A300 crashed in the Rockaway Beach section of the Queens borough of New
York Monday, Nov. 12, 2001. The tailpiece was recovered from Jamaica Bay and towed to shore. (AP Photo/Daniel P. Derella)