Published: Thursday, December 22, 1988
Section: FRONT
Page: 1A
A Pan Am jumbo jet bound for New York with 258 people -- many of them Christmas travelers -- crashed Wednesday night in a Scottish village, exploding in a huge fireball, destroying dozens of homes and spreading burning wreckage for 10 miles.
No survivors were found from the Boeing 747, according to John Boyd, the police chief for the area. Royal Air Force rescuers said the plane "demolished two rows of houses. There are no survivors from those houses."
An air safety consultant said speculation about the cause of the crash was sure to center on an explosion aboard the plane or some structural defect.
Flight 103 crashed in the heart of Lockerbie, a village 10 miles northeast of Dumfries in southern Scotland, about an hour after departing London's Heathrow Airport.
Boyd said parts of the plane came down in six separate locations over a 10-mile radius.
A Heathrow spokesman said the jet was carrying 255 adults and three children -- many laden with Christmas gifts. There were 15 crew members aboard.
"There was a terrible explosion, and the whole sky lit up, and the sky was actually raining fire," said Mike Carnahan, a Lockerbie resident who was a few hundred yards from the scene.
"It was just like liquid. We have actually found an aluminum rivet embedded in the metal of my car," Carnahan told BBC Television.
Carnahan said he believed the plane was on fire before it crashed because "it was trailing flames when it went over the village."
"The way it exploded was just beyond description," he said. "All I could see was flames and fire . . . I could see several houses on the skyline whose roofs were totally off and all you could see was flaming timbers and what was left of the houses."
In New York, Jeff Kriendler, Pan Am's vice president for corporate communications, said the airline has received unconfirmed reports that the pilot of another plane in the vicinity of Flight 103 had seen a "ball of fire" in the air shortly before the plane plummeted to earth.
Kriendler refused to speculate on whether a bomb might have caused the crash. But he could cite only one other example of a transatlantic flight reaching cruising altitude, then crashing -- the Air India flight that crashed into the Irish Sea in 1985. That crash was believed to have been caused by a bomb.
Kriendler said the only communications with the cockpit after takeoff were "normal contacts" with air traffic controllers.
The last communication came at 7:15 p.m. London time when the crew reported to an air traffic control center below that it was passing over southern Scotland, he said.
By then the flight had reached its cruising altitude of 31,000 feet and was "precisely on its flight plan to John F. Kennedy International Airport," Kriendler said.
Two minutes later -- 7:17 p.m. -- it disappeared from the Scottish control center's radar screens.
There were no distress calls, "no indication of any problems, . . . no contact from the captain or any of the crew members," Kriendler said.
Air safety consultant Wayne Williams of Plantation said that when an aircraft comes apart at 31,000 feet, as this one apparently did, the speculation centers on three possibilities: structural failure, a bomb or explosion of some sort, or a midair collision.
Since there were no indications of a midair collision, speculation was sure to center on the first two options, said Williams, 61.
New York's Syracuse University said 38 of its students were booked on the flight, and there were reports that some U.S. service personnel were aboard.
The U.N. commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, 50, of Sweden, also was a passenger, said U.N. spokesman Francois Giuliani. Representatives of South Africa, Cuba and Angola are to sign agreements today in New York for Namibian independence and withdrawal of 50,000 Cuban troops from Angola.
In Detroit, Volkswagen of America said Pan Am had confirmed that VW's second-ranking U.S. official, James Fuller, and VW executive Lou Marengo were aboard the flight.
Also aboard were John Mulroy, The Associated Press director of international communications, and his son Sean and daughter- in-law Ingrid.
"It is obviously still too early to put a precise figure on the number of dead and injured but indications suggest there were no survivors from the aircraft," police chief Boyd told a news conference in Scotland.
Along a country road leading to Lockerbie, rescue parties could be seen examining pieces of smoking wreckage, and there were what looked like blanket-covered bodies, said Bert Houston, a Scottish journalist reporting for The Associated Press from Lockerbie.
Sherwood Crescent, the Lockerbie square that bore the brunt of the crash, was sealed off, and traffic blocked entry to the village, so that rescuers had to fly in and out by helicopter, he said .
Some of the wreckage also landed on cars on the four-lane bypass around Lockerbie and they went up in flames, he said.
Independent Television News said witnesses reported seeing two fireballs about three miles apart, but there was no report from aviation authorities that another aircraft was involved in the crash.
Witness John Glasgow said the aircraft hit a road, skidded for about 1,500 yards and then exploded.
"The whole road was ablaze," Glasgow said. "The road was completely covered with masonry, garden gates and apparently parts of the plane, but not very big parts.
"We tried to get near the plane but it was completely on fire. . . . It went up in a fireball."
Flight 103 had originated in Frankfurt, West Germany, using a Boeing 727 for the flight to London. Passengers who continued to New York boarded the Boeing 747 in London, which was to have connected with another 727 flying from New York to Detroit.
This report was supplemented with information from Herald staff writer Mary Voboril in New York.