Aircraft fire — birds blamed

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34000, 14 November 1975, Page 13

Aircraft fire — birds blamed

CN'.Z. Press Assn —Copyright; NEW YORK, Nov. 12. A quick-thinking pilot brought his DCIO jetliner to a halt, after it caught fire during takeoff at Kennedy Airport. Birds taken into the engine were blamed for the explosion and subsequent fire. All 139 persons aboard slid down evacuation chutes to safety after the pilot brought the aircraft to a halt. Four people aboard the Overseas National Airways plane suffered slight injuries. Five policemen were also injured while assisting in the evacuation. The fire and subsequent explosions sent thick black smoke thousands of feet high and shattered the aircraft. “I don’t see how anyone made it out alive,” said a nurse, Geraldine Whyte, who came to the airport to offer

assistance after learning of the accident. The plane strewed debris for 3000 feet along the runway before the pilot aborted the take-off. The aircraft was quickly engulfed with flames but not before everybody aboard was evacuated. The last major local crash occurred on June 24 when an Eastern Airlines 727 went down at Kennedy Airport while coming in for a landing from New Orleans. The death toll of 114 made it the worst plane disaster in the history of American civil aviation. Police at the airport said that the fire on flight 032 broke out in the threeengined plane’s right wing engine, then spread until it engulfed the 170-foot fuselage. Several explosions marked the spread of the flames and eventually the tail section of the aircraft was split from the rest of the fuselage.

In the photograph, firemen are seen beside the smoking wreckage.