NEW YORK, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- An American Airlines A300 Airbus crashed in Queens shortly after takeoff from JFK airport Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The crash of American flight 587, en route to the Dominican Republic, set off fires in several buildings and caused New York officials to close all major airports in the area.
CNN reported the plane carried 246 passengers and nine crew.
The crash comes two months and a day after two planes, one of them an American Airlines flight, crashed into the World Trade Center towers. However, the FAA spokesman, William Shumann, said they had "no indication" that the crash was a terrorist act.
The crash area is called Far Rockaway, a residential area in the borough of Queens, a thin peninsula from the mainland sticking west-southwesterly into the Atlantic Ocean and across Jamaica Bay from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
A woman who lived in the area told WCBS-TV she did not hear an explosion. Susan Locke, who lives five blocks from the scene said: "It sounded like a rumble, I didn't hear an explosion. I looked up and saw a plane head straight down. It nosed down."
