A Comair plane en route from Cincinnati plunged into a snow-covered field as it approached Detroit Metro Airport on Thursday, killing all 26 passengers and three crew members aboard as it exploded into a fireball.
The twin-engine, propeller-driven Embraer Brasilia 120 was a ''white blur'' as it nose-dived through a light snow, smashed into the frozen turf and erupted into flames, shaking homes at least 2 miles away.
The airline released the names of all 26 passengers late Thursday. Among those were Dexter Adams of Paddock Hills. Mr. Adams, 41, was a senior purchasing manager at Procter & Gamble Co. He was on a recruiting trip.
Also killed were the Cincinnati-based crew of Capt. Dann Carlsen of Grant County, Ky., with the airline since February 1990; 1st Officer Kenneth Reece, with Comair since October 1994; and flight attendant Darinda Ogden of Lexington, Ky., an employee since December 1992.
Among the passengers was Toyota executive Keita Takenami. Comair identified Mr. Takenami as a resident of Colts Neck, N.J., but he actually lives in Lexington, Ky., said Tom Harris, Toyota spokesman.
Also on board was Maureen DeMarco, 37, a teacher at St. Mary's Academy in Englewood, Colo., a Denver suburb. She was flying to Detroit for the funeral of her brother, Brian Scully, who was one of six people killed when an Airborne Express cargo jet crashed in the mountains of Virginia during a test flight Dec. 22.
Remnants of Flight 3272 were spread across the field in sparsely populated Raisinville Township, about 45 miles southwest of Detroit, said Dave Soncrant, spokesman for the Monroe County Emergency Management Division.
A heavy snow continued falling Thursday night as about 100 emergency crew members responded to the scene, Mr. Soncrant said. Witnesses described a giant black spot covering the field, littered with broken bodies, scraps of airplane, luggage and oil.
''They're going to work through the night identifying bodies and tagging them,'' Mr. Soncrant said.
This morning, the medical examiner's office will begin recovering remains and taking them to the county fairgrounds about 7 miles away, where a temporary morgue has been set up.
The 30-seat plane left Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport at 2:51 p.m. and was approaching Detroit Metro Airport when it went down near a farmhouse about 18 miles from the airport.
The plane was flying at 3,000 feet when air traffic controllers cleared it for landing. The pilot gave no indication of any trouble. Comair officials said the plane dropped off radar at 3:56 p.m.
Jenny Barnes, 18, was doing laundry when she felt her home rattle. She and her sister raced outside and saw a cloud of smoke and fire rising about 50 yards away.
''I kept thinking, 'If someone's alive, maybe we can do something,' '' Ms. Barnes said. When she got to the edge of the fallow field, she saw ''what looked like brains. The worst was the blood on the snow. I couldn't believe it, this was in my back yard. There were pieces of plane everywhere, and papers.
''It looked like someone's mail or letters, laying in the snow, and then we saw diapers. I said to my sister, 'Oh, God, there was a baby on that plane.' ''
Ted Rath has lived 32 years on a Raisinville Township farm that sits under a flight path to the airport. He's accustomed to loud commercial jets overhead, but Thursday was different.
''Usually, they're not (flying) that low,'' said the 69-year-old farmer and truck driver, who was outside fetching his newspaper from the mailbox. ''I heard this loud noise from the plane. Its engines were laboring, struggling. I looked up and saw it. And it was doing kind of a cartwheel, then it went straight down.''
The Comair plane was just 400 to 500 feet in the air when he saw it plummet into the field that was once the site of a religious park.
''It did a barrel roll - about three of them - and then it went straight down,'' Mr. Rath said.
Comair officials refused to speculate on causes of the crash. But a Comair pilot contacted Thursday night suggested ice buildup on the wings could have been a problem.
''When you have ice buildup, that disrupts the airflow over the wings, causing the plane to lose lift and stall,'' said the pilot, who asked that his name not be used.
''Typically what happens is you'll lose lift on one wing, and that will cause the plane to roll over and go into the ground,'' he explained.
Comair officials said they don't think icing was a problem.
Conditions at the airport when the plane crashed included visibility less than three-quarters of a mile, fog and light snow, said Bill Hosmon, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. Wind was blowing about 6 mph, and the temperature was 28 degrees.
Comair officials said their information was that visibility was 1ó miles, with visibility above the aircraft at 800 to 1,100 feet.
Cathy Conner, 14, had just stepped off the school bus when she looked up and saw the plane.
''I just saw a white blur,'' she said. ''I saw the plane about two seconds, and it just went nose to the ground at an 80- or 90-degree angle. It was a huge explosion and fire.''
Cathy, a ninth-grader at Dundee High School, covered her head and ran inside her home.
Nine-year-old Justin Van Demark was playing in the snow with his 6-year-old brother, Jonathon, when the plane descended behind their house and across the Raisin River.
''It was very high up in the sky. It was sort of just a little dot, and it started to turn,'' said Justin, a
third-grader at St. Michael's School in Monroe, Mich.
''We saw it coming down spinning, then it just stopped spinning and dropped straight down to the ground. Right after it hit, it blew up. We couldn't see anything but smoke,'' he said.
''You could smell the gas fumes in the air.''
An 11-member team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board was en route to the scene late Thursday, said Pat Cariseo, an NTSB spokesman in Washington, D.C. Those investigators are expected to start their probe early this morning.
Their priority will be to locate the voice cockpit and data recorders. Those devices will be sent to NTSB labs in Washington for analysis.
They'll also study what factors could have contributed to the crash, including weather, engine trouble, structural or system damage, air-
traffic control problems, human performance and aircraft maintenance, Mr. Cariseo said.
Comair officials looked shaken at two news conferences Thursday night at the Holiday Inn near the Cincinnati airport. It was the second fatal crash in the company's history.
''On behalf of Comair and the 3,000 men and women who are its heart and soul, I would like to express our deepest sympathy to the families and friends of those on board Flight 3272,'' said Senior Vice President Charles Curran.
Comair pilot David Buck of Union knew both Capt. Carlsen and 1st Officer Reece and had flown with Officer Reece just last week.
''This is really a shock,'' Mr. Buck said. ''It just makes you feel so bad. You have to wonder what happened - because I know these people, and I know they are good, competent pilots.''
Mr. Curran promised to work closely with NTSB investigators. The airline has dispatched 30 employees to the crash scene to aid the investigation, and officials have begun reviewing the airplane's maintenance log and found no indication of problems, he said.
''We pledge the total commitment of Comair and its employees to this effort and whatever is required to ensure that it will not happen again,'' he said.
Mr. Curran said the flight to Detroit was routine and the crew well rested. He said the plane was in use earlier Thursday and no problems were reported.
The NTSB team will be headed by John Hammerschmidt, who also examined the crash of the Embraer 120 that killed five people in 1995 in Carrollton, Ga. In 1991, 23 people, including former Sen. John Tower of Texas, were killed in an Embraer crash in Brunswick, Ga.
The Embraer 120 is a Brazilian-built
built turboprop. More than 300 of the planes are in use, most in North America, where they are popular with regional and commuter airlines. There have been three fatal U.S. crashes involving the Embraer 120 since 1991.
Comair obtained the plane in 1992, and it had its last major maintenance check on Nov. 20, said Mr. Curran. The plane did not have a history of maintenance problems, he said.
The last fatal crash for Comair occurred when a twin-engine Piper Navajo crashed at the Cincinnati airport in 1979 after an engine failed on takeoff. Eight people were killed.
Comair serves Florida and the Midwest, offering connections to Delta Air Lines flights as part of a group of small carriers that collectively are known as the Delta Connection. Delta owns about 20 percent of Comair.
Thursday night, many of those who live near the field where the plane crashed were still shaken. Cindy Mozingo was eating an apple in her kitchen when she heard the plane go down. A mile away from the crash, she and her 14-year-old daughter felt the jolt.
She and her daughter, Cassidy, got in their car and hurried to the scene to see whether they could help. But there was nothing they could do.
''It was so inflamed that you couldn't get close to it,'' she said. ''We were afraid of another explosion.
''They said there were body parts, and they didn't want any children back there,'' she said. ''We said a prayer for them.''
Contributing to this package were Enquirer reporters Lisa Biank Fasig, Kym Liebler, Tanya Bricking, Kathleen Hillenmeyer, Ursula Miller, Jane Prendergast, Kristi Nelson, Andrea Tortora, Guy Boulton, Christine Wolff, John Hopkins, Dana DiFilippo, Terry Flynn, Darrell S. Pressley, Gregory A. Hall, Cindy Schroeder, William A. Weathers, Mike Boyer, Tim Sullivan and Patrick Crowley.
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