NY-Bound Jet Crashes in Scotland
LI resident among the 258 victims

A New York-bound jumbo jet with 258 people aboard plummeted 31,000 feet into a Scottish town yesterday, apparently killing all aboard in a fireball that also engulfed dozens of houses and a section of the main road linking England and Scotland. None of those aboard the Pan Am Boeing 747 were believed to have survived, officials with Britain's Royal Air Force and Department of Transport said.

It was not known how many were killed in the small village of Lockerbie, where the main part of the wreckage came down about 2:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, but it was feared that the toll could be heavy. At least a dozen on the ground were confirmed to be injured.

"There was a terrible explosion," John McGuiness, who was a few hundred yards from the scene in Lockerbie, told British television. "It was actually raining fire, liquid fire."

A group of 38 Syracuse University students bound for home for the Christmas holidays, all but two of them part of a foreign study program, were among the 243 passengers and 15 crew members aboard Flight 103, which left London's Heathrow Airport about 1:25 p.m. EST and met a connecting flight from Frankfurt, West Germany.
The toll also was believed to include numerous U.S. armed service personnel and their families. Three passengers were infants. Two Long Island men were confirmed to be aboard the plane.

John Mulroy, 59, of East Northport, director of international communications for The Associated Press, was aboard the jet, the AP confirmed. The family said that five of Mulroy's relatives were also on board. And family members said Floral Park resident Gabriel Della Ripa, 46, who was returning to New York after visiting family in his native Italy, was also aboard the plane.

There was no definitive word on the cause, but there were indications that the Pan Am jet, one of the earliest versions of a 19-year-old design noted for its safety record, may have begun to disintegrate before hitting the ground. Debris and bodies were found scattered over a wide area.
John Boyd, the police chief for the area, said parts of the plane came down in six locations over a 10-mile radius.

Pan Am and British authorities say there was no evidence of sabotage, but aviation experts said the possibility could not be discounted. "It could be structural failure," said Jim Ferguson, aviation editor of Flight International magazine. "It could be sabotage . . . That's a possibility." John Galipault, president of the Aviation Safety Institute in Ohio, said yesterday that the earliest information concerning the accident indicated that either a bomb or a catastrophic failure inside the plane or its engines was the primary reason for the crash.

Rescue efforts were hampered by traffic jams on A74, the main road between England and Scotland, where the crash's fireball engulfed numerous cars. The 747, just beginning its transatlantic flight, was heavily loaded with volatile jet fuel, and it was also reported to have hit a gas station.

Many houses were reported still burning for hours after the crash. Boyd would not speculate late yesterday on the death toll in Lockerbie, but said he feared it could be heavy. The crash occurred around dinnertime, when many residents would have been in their homes. "The damage which took place within the town was very severe," he said.
He said the fireball "demolished two rows of houses. There are no survivors from those houses." Graham Byerley, who was at a hotel about a half-mile from Lockerbie, said guests heard an explosion and at first thought perhaps a local factory had blown up. "Then we heard a tremendous shudder on the ground, as if an earthquake," he said.

Initial reports from witnesses said the plane hit a hill a few miles outside Lockerbie and began to break up before plunging into the village of 2,500, plowing down a street and crashing into a highway bypass outside Lockerbie. "It appears that it struck once and bounced," said Air Vice-Marshal David Brook, in charge of coordinating the RAF rescue services.

The blue-and-white nose section, bearing the Pan Am Clipper's name Maid of the Seas, landed in a muddy field near a church at the village of Tundergarth, 3 miles from Lockerbie. Orange life jackets and a dinghy lay nearby. Police standing by the wreckage said several bodies were found in nearby woods.

Witnesses to the crash described an approaching roar, then a huge bang followed by a 300-foot tower of flame. Burning debris rained on the town, scattering debris and chunks of smoldering metal. Cars on the village's four-lane bypass caught fire as they traveled. "We thought it was an earthquake, but it was above us," said villager Cathy Gilmour. "We saw this great ball of fire, as if it were stars."

"This V-shaped object just seemed to come flying through the air," said Lockerbie resident Sheila McDonald, who was delivering Christmas presents to a friend's home on a hillside overlooking the town. "It was the wings and front section of an aircraft . . . another part came just behind and all around seemed to be red dots like sparks," she said. "It hit some houses in the town and there was a mass of flame and everything just started to shake."

The flight was normal in altitude and location, Pan Am officials said, and radio transmissions from the cockpit were routine up to the time the 747 disappeared from radar at Scotland's Prestwick Airport air traffic control center. At a news conference in New York, Pan Am officials said that whatever happened on the jet occurred suddenly, while the 747 was at 31,000 feet. Spokesman Jeff Kriendler said authorities lost radio contact with the plane at 2:15 p.m. EST, and two minutes later the plane disappeared from the radar screen. The crash was confirmed at 2:19 p.m.

But before that rapid series of events, all had appeared to be well, he said. "It was normal and routine. There was no indication of any problem . . . It was flying precisely on its flight plan," he said. Pat Coffey of the Royal Air Force headquarters in Edinburgh said that ambulances from across northern England and southern Scotland converged on Lockerbie, while RAF helicopters hovered over the crash scene, ready to transport victims to medical facilities in Dumfries, about 15 miles away.

The village is about 65 miles south of Glasgow, 275 miles north of London. Some witnesses said they saw a second plane crashing to the ground, but government officials in London said they thought there was no other aircraft involved. Instead, the BBC reported, it was believed that if there was more than one fireball, it was created when the plane may have broken up..

Pan Am said that people seeking information about relatives or friends they fear were aboard the jetliner can call one of two telephone numbers - 1-800-221-1111 or 718-632-4288.