Officials are eyeing some catastrophic mechanical failure as the reason American Airlines Flight 587 came crashing into homes of Belle Harbor, however, they noted that even though that is where their evidence is leading, they cannot yet rule out sabatoge.

And surveying the homes still standing in the Rockaway neighborhood that billowed smoke this week, just two months after smoke began to billow up from ground zero in Manhattan, Mayor Rudy Giuliani added somberly, "It could have been far worse."

The American Airlines jetliner bound for Santo Domingo from New York with 260 people on board took a nosedive into a neighborhood in Belle Harbor after it took off from Runway 311 at JFK International Airport at 9:14 a.m. on Nov. 12.

Some eyewitnesses said that as the plane ascended it began to "wobble," it flipped abruptly onto its nose and veered straight down in a "sharp spiral," spewing plumes of black smoke and bright orange flames. The plane shed its rudder and sheared-off tail fin and ripped through the roofs of 12 two- and three-story homes in Belle Harbor.

With an explosive roar, the crash sent residents running into the streets in horror. The plane crashed into a huge crater, spewing muddy debris and smoking luggage as chunks of metal as big as cars showered a five-block area in the neighborhood. Part of one of the plane’s engines landed in the driveway of a house. Most of the other engine crashed into a Texaco station – missing a parked trailer and a series of gas tanks "by a whisper," eyewitnesses said.

Four houses were completely destroyed. The tail fin was later fished out of Jamaica Bay and seven people were listed as missing from their homes in the Rockaway enclave.

Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the lead investigative agency, gave the following account:

Flight 587 seemed to be in trouble just moments after takeoff. The plane’s Flight Voice Recorder revealed that it took off 74 minutes late because of security checks. The flight’s passengers passed through JFK Terminal 8 – the checkpoint that was shut down by federal agents on Nov. 1 because of a "severe breach in security."

The flight was filled to capacity. In fact, NTSB sources said, it was overbooked. There were five infants on board, riding in the laps of adults.

The voice recorder revealed an "airframe rattling noise," just after takeoff, and the plane disappeared from radar screens at 9:16 a.m., at an altitude of 2,800 feet, while traveling at 306 miles per hour – a higher speed than authorized at that low altitude.

It was at this point that eyewitnesses report hearing "a series of explosions" before the crash.

The plane’s co-pilot then called for maximum power, and the pilots reported they were losing control. Flight 587 crashed less than three minutes after takeoff from JFK.

NTSB investigators are saying that there are a "world of circumstances" that could have caused the crash. Massive mechanical failure, sabotage, or "any number of occurrences."

Jim Danaher, former chair of the NTSB, said the agency has "not ruled out the possibility" of sabotage, which will be determined – in part – through a "finite" investigation of ground and "remnant debris."

Danaher said the reported rattling noises could, in fact, be the sound of "something coming apart." The agency must be very clear at this point, he said, that it does not have a reason for the crash, rather, many "possibilities to probe."

The Engine

The European-made Airbus A300 was designed three decades ago by a consortium of engineers. Most of the Airbus 300s currently in use were manufactured in 1969. Approximately 1,000 are currently in use around the world. American Airlines has 400 of the planes in operation at this time, sources said – some manufactured more recently. Most of the 400 planes are at their "end of run," the sources said, mean that they would soon be ready to be retire.

FAA Warning

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned the airline industry in a 2000 letter and in an Air Alert Directive in June 2001, that engine failure and "engines falling off the planes" on the Airbus 300 series were a serious safety issue that needed to be "immediately addressed." The June 2001 FAA directive came after a reported 300 of the A300 series aircraft went out of service immediately after losing an engine, sources said.

An engine from the plane was found at a gas station blocks away from the main wreckage. PRESS Photo by Ira Cohen

"These engines actually blow a few of their blades," said Chuck Miller, former chief of security at the NTSB.

"You can watch as the engine shakes violently, but nothing comes out. Then the blades are chewed up and spit out like shrapnel, through the back of the engine, and the damn thing falls off," Miller said.

The engine has a record of five "uncontained engine failures" in the last two years – the components of the failing engine blast a hole through the protective cowling, spitting pieces like shrapnel, and the entire engine from the plane, he said.

The FAA directive warned of the failures, and instructed airlines to increase inspection of the engines for cracks. "Discussions with the manufacturer revealed that this was a known failure mode," the directive read.

On Oct. 5, the FAA proposed a rule that would mandate the inspections.

"The mandatory inspections are needed to identify those crucial rotating parts with conditions, which if allowed to continue in service, could result in uncontained engine failure," the agency said.

FAA studies showed that in incidents where the engines failed, they sprayed parts outside the confines of the motor, striking the aircraft they were powering.

Pilot Training

If an engine fell off or broke up, Miller said, it would surely destroy the plane’s hydraulic systems, making it impossible to fly.

Danaher added that there are no provisions for training pilots to handle this type of situation. Pilots are only trained in how to handle engine failure – not in how to deal with an engine falling off a plane.

Perhaps, he said, that is because there is no way to "handle" it. The incident is so catastrophic that all anyone can do at that point "is pray," he said.

Without the engine(s), the aircraft would "roll and nosedive," spewing parts as it fell – just as did Flight 587.

Rudder, Tail Fin

Investigators have pushed to the top of their list a probe of how the plane’s rudder and tail fin was sheared off prior to the crash. The tail fin was recovered from Jamaica Bay – miles from the plane’s place of impact.

"The plane couldn’t fly," Danaher said. "It was clearly having trouble gaining altitude, as proven by the pilot’s request for "maximum speed" just before it disappeared from the radar screens."

Wind Turbulence

This is one of the most likely causes of the crash, NTSB investigators said.

It occurs when two aircraft fly close enough for one of the planes to be affected by a wind shear from the other aircraft. Pilots on board Flight 587 reported their feeling that the plane was experiencing wind turbulence shortly after takeoff.

Recovery efforts retrieved the plane’s Flight Data Recorder, which was badly damaged during the crash, Danaher said. NTSB officials are sending the device to the manufacturer in Florida to see if "they can get something out of it."

The firm "probably will," Danaher said.

"We just have to wait until then to see if the recorder holds the key to what happened here," he said.

The NTSB was unable to give a projected estimate of when the agency may receive any available data from the damaged "black box." The probe is expected to take at least a year to complete.

The world tuned in to Belle Harbor, Queens this week, but on an average day the neighborhood is a quiet, close-knit suburban community in the Rockaways that has gone through social and economic changes since the 1950’s but has kept its small town charm and values.

The enclave of middle and upper income one-family homes, mostly converted from beach bungalows to estates, runs about 10 blocks between Neponsit and Rockaway Park.

It boasts tree-lined streets with views of sweeping white sand and the vast blue/green waters of the Atlantic. Mom and pop stores continue to serve the needs of locals and visitors.

Sandy Bernstein, managing editor of community newspaper The Wave, spoke to the PRESS about the changes that have occurred in Belle Harbor since the 50’s.

"It’s a European mix of long time residents," said Bernstein. "They don’t leave. But over the last 10 to 15 years, there’s been an influx of wealthy Brooklynites buying up old large houses that were used for summer rentals and single residency occupancy, and renovating them."

"Property values have gone up," he added, and it’s been good for the Rockaways."

The area’s largest population are Irish and Jewish, with Italians and others in the minority. It hosts P.S. 114, the highest achieving elementary school in the Rockaways, and has two high schools, Far Rockaway and Beach Channel.

Life is attempting to limp back to normalcy in the quiet, seaside town of Belle Harbor, though signs of the Nov. 12 air crash that shook the community are everywhere.

Local anglers dropped their fishing lines into the waters of Jamaica Bay on Nov. 13, but now those waters are patrolled by the Coast Guard and the police searching for debris. Mothers brought their babies for strolls under sunny skies now filled with the swirl of helicopters and the resumed roar of commercial planes from JFK Airport.

Weekend weary children once again took to the streets to play, but now it is in between hordes of media and federal officials buzzing around the closed blocks from Beach 128th and Beach 133rd streets between Cronston and Newport avenues.

"I feel we’re very vulnerable," said 35-year Belle Harbor resident Kathleen Mallon in a brogue she shares with the many other Irish Americans who live side by side with a sizable Jewish population in the middle class neighborhood. "Everybody is scared, I’ve never seen anything like this, never. Not even hurricanes . . . we’re always missed by hurricanes. We always just lucked out."

But the luck ran out this week for the Rockaway Peninsula neighborhood when American Airlines Flight 587 from JFK plummeted from the sky, killing 260 Dominican Republic-bound passengers and destroying homes on the ground.

"It’s been a rough two months," said a woman who has lived on Beach 129th Street for 45 years and asked not to be identified further. One of the neighbors she was close to is now presumed dead. "We’re not over the other shock yet," she said.

That other shock, from the World Trade Center destruction on Sept. 11, claimed the lives of nearly 100 residents of Belle Harbor and neighboring communities of the Rockaways.

Some, like Mallon, could not help but link the two tragic events. "I still think it’s terrorists. I think it was an explosion and I think our government should tell us the truth," she said, though the preliminary investigation points toward mechanical failure or turbulence troubles.

Others, like 40-year resident Cantor Fuchs, initially associated the sounds of the crash to that of the Concorde jets, whose notorious sonic boom has been a great source of local controversy and came back to the neighborhood when the jets began flying out of JFK Airport again on Nov. 7.

"In the morning I had breakfast and I was sitting by the table when I heard a terrible roar," said the 87-year-old Fuchs, who spent the day after the crash raking leaves and catching up on some fall cleaning.

Opinions were mixed in Belle Harbor this week over whether or not they should be more apprehensive about living so close to the airport. "I’m not scared, what do I have to be scared about," Fuchs said.

Fifty family members of passengers lost in the Flight 587 crash joined over a thousand parishioners at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Corona Nov. 13 as their Bishop, Thomas Dailey, spoke to them in Spanish about hope.

Friends and family members of three Corona sisters joined together to mourn at Our Lady of Sorrows Church. PRESS Photo by Nick Abadjian

Dailey, Bishop of the Archdiocese of Brooklyn and Queens, told the gathering that just because a loved-one’s body goes away, their spirit remains to be reunited with God. In between parts of the mass, musicians played on guitars, keyboards and congas.

Many of those who attended were related to three Corona sisters who were on board the flight bound for Santo Domingo. The sisters, who were in their late 40s and early 50s, were very active in the neighborhood and at Our Lady.

But the mourning went beyond personal sorrow and was filled with a sense of loss for all of the 265 victims of the flight which was headed to the Dominican Republic. Councilman-elect Hiram Monserrate joined the mourners to show his support for his neighborhood which has a very large Dominican population.

Dailey will be coming back to the church for a Diocesan mass on Wednesday, Nov. 21 at 7:30 p.m.

This is the final list of people killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 to Santo Domingo on Nov. 12. The list was compiled by American Airlines and released on Nov. 14 after the families of all victims were notified.