FLORENCE, Ky. -- An Air Canada DC-9 jetliner with 46 people aboard burst into flame in flight Thursday night, filling the cabin with smoke until it made an emergency landing at Greater Cincinnati Airport. Officials said 23 people were killed and at least 18 were injured.
Heavy smoke poured into the cabin as the plane flew over Kentucky en route from Dallas-Fort Worth to Toronto, but the pilot did a 'tremendous job' in setting the plane down as flames burned gaping holes in its fuselage, officials said.
Survivors said the fire apparently began in a rear washroom on the 110-seat plane, Air Canada's Flight 797 with 41 passengers and a crew of five aboard, and still burned as the plane came to a halt in the middle of the runway.
Airport spokeswoman Lynn Sutter said 23 people were killed. Other officials said at least 18 people were injured and five escaped unharmed.
'The names of the fatalities are being withheld until next of kin are notified,' Air Canada manager James Gedra said. 'An investigative team is en route from Montreal.'
'Some of the crew are dead,' Air Canada spokesman John Wardall told a news conference in Toronto. 'There are Air Canada teams from Montreal going to the Cincinnati airport now.'
Wardall said the cause of the accident 'will not come out for a while.'
But passenger Barry Flower, 37, of Ottawa, said the blaze apparently broke out in a rear restroom.
'A fire broke out in the left-hand toilet at the back, I believe,' Flower said. 'The passengers moved forward into the front half of the airplane and the captain did an emergency descent.'
On the ground, witness Sam Pavone, who ironically also witnessed the May 25, 1979 crash of an American Airlines DC-10 in Chicago in which 272 people died, saw the accident while waiting for a flight.
'I'm so sick,' said Pavone, regional manager for a suburban Chicago auto leasing firm.
'As soon as the plane hit there were rescue units on the scene,' Pavone said, 'but they couldn't do anything -- it was too late. The smoke was so bad, about all you could see were the lights from rescue units.'
Some survivors were admitted to William Booth Memorial Hospital for smoke inhalation and other minor injuries, officials said. Others were admitted to St. Elizabeth South Hospital in Covington, Ky., across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.
A firefighter was also treated for minor injuries.
At Toronto International Airport, relatives waiting to meet the flight were moved into a locked VIP lounge by airline officials.
The Rev. Paul Healy, the airport chaplain, said, 'There was hardly anybody here to meet the flight. There are only three people there in the VIP lounge.
'Two of them are okay because they already got word that their uncle is all right, and the third person is still waiting to hear about her husband. But she's quite calm, she's taking it very well.'
The airport field maintenance building in the Cincinnati suburb of Florence, Ky., was turned into a temporary morgue and the Kenton County Coroner's office was examining the bodies as they were removed from the plane.
Shortly before the accident, the plane's pilot radioed the regional air control center in Indianapolis that an engine was on fire, FAA officials said.
Norm Gorwood, regional public affairs director for Air Canada, said the fire was discovered aboard the aircraft at 7:21 p.m. EDT and the plane was ordered to land in Cincinnati.
The aircraft came to a halt on the runway and observers said there were numerous holes in the body of the plane, apparently caused by the fire.
One gaping, 10-foot-wide hole was burned into the top of the plane about 40 feet from the tail. The edges of the hole were blackened by smoke.
Fire engines surrounded the aircraft and emergency vehicles sped back and forth between the plane and the makeshift morgue.
The blaze was extinguished about 45 minutes after if was reported, officials said, but dense smoke poured from the plane and hampered rescue operations.
An eight-man team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board was dispatched to Cincinnati from Washington, said NTSB spokesman Bob Buckhorn. The team was to be headed by Donald Engen, a member of the board.
The airport was reopened to traffic less than four hours after the accident and several airplanes were taking off very close to site.
Rescuers bathed the plane in spotlights and several dozen people worked furiously to remove bodies and survivors from the aircraft.
Airport officials continued their search of the wreckage long after dark to be sure they had removed all passengers and crew.
Thursday's disaster on the Air Canada flight at Cincinnati Airport was the second serious incident involving a DC-9 aircraft in less than a week.
Last Saturday, a Republic Airlines plane made an emergency landing 18 miles short of its Phoenix, Ariz., destination because it had not been refueled before takeoff.
The Federal Aviation Administration in Washington said it was the first commercial airline accident in the United States since a Pan Am jet crashed in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, La., last July 9, killing 154 people.
The last major fatal accident at Cincinnati Airport occurred in 1967 when a TWA airliner crashed, killing about 70 passengers.
In October 1979, a small commuter plane crashed on take off at the airport, killing all eight people on board.
