Vedpal Singh, his arm in a sling, said at the airport on Saturday that he heard a loud sound after the plane touched down and knew something was horribly wrong.
He said the plane then went silent before people tried to get out anyway they could. The entire incident lasted about 10 seconds.
Singh was visibly shaken. He was traveling with his wife and at least one child from South Korea, where he works, and said he was in the middle of the aircraft.
He said it was "miraculous" that he survived.
Airport spokesman Dave VanderVeen said the Cessna 172 went down about 1:40 p.m. Friday at Oakland County International Airport in Waterford Township. Three people aboard the private flight were killed instantly, while the fourth died later at a hospital.
VanderVeen said three of the victims were male and one was female but couldn't identify them further.
"It's a very sad day for the airport," said VanderVeen, the county's director of central services, who previously managed the airport for 25 years. He added that the airport's last fatal crash was in 2006.
VanderVeen said the pilot took off from a runway designed for smaller planes and reached an altitude of about 100 feet before requesting permission to return. The plane crashed in a field.
The Federal Aviation Administration was en route to the airport and the National Transportation and Safety Board is expected to arrive Saturday.
Oakland County is the state's second busiest airport after Detroit Metropolitan Airport, which is in the Detroit suburb of Romulus.
In 2006, a flight instructor and his student were killed when a single-engine plane belonging to a flight school crashed at the airport.
"He was a very good person and very smart person," Connerton told The Associated Press by telephone from Rochester, Minn.
Brokaw, 33, of Monroe, Mich., was among seven Americans killed Monday when their National Air Cargo plane crashed near an Air Force base in Afghanistan. Six of the victims were from Michigan and a seventh was from Kentucky, said Shirley Kaufman, National Air Cargo vice president.
Connerton said Brokaw was a key reason he was able to make it through flight school in Jacksonville, Fla., where they met.
Connerton also described a harrowing flight two years ago from Toledo, Ohio, to an international flight expo in Lakeland, Fla. Connerton said ice had built up on the plane to the point that he could no longer get it to climb.
"If it wasn't for Jamie's navigation and know-how ... we wouldn't have made it," Connerton said.
Killed along with Brokaw in the Afghanistan crash were Gary Stockdale, 51; pilots Brad Hasler, 34, of Trenton, Mich., and Jeremy Lipka, 37, of Brooklyn, Mich.; first officer Rinku Summan, 32, of Canton, Mich.; loadmaster Michael Sheets, 36, of Ypsilanti, Mich.; and maintenance crewman Timothy Garrett, 51, of Louisville, Ky.
Building model planes and working on real ones comprised Stockdale's passion, filling the family's basement with models in his youth, jumping into aviation as a career at age 16 — and later working at two Detroit-area airports.
Stockdale also knew the dangers of flying, his older brother said Tuesday.
"He always said it was dangerous," said Glenn Stockdale, 55. "He would always say, 'You either will die in a car crash or a ball of flame in a plane.'"
Lipka had flow in Iraq as well as Afghanistan and had close calls before, said his stepfather, Dave Buttman.
"There was risk there all the time. He knew the risks. He volunteered to take the trips," Buttman told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. "Basically, you're taking your chances flying in there and he was just happy to be one of the pilots to do it."
The Dubai-bound Boeing 747-400 — operated by National Air Cargo — crashed just after takeoff Monday from Bagram Air Base around 11:20 a.m. local time, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement Tuesday.
The accident site is within the perimeter of Bagram Air Base.
The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but NATO said the claims were false and there was no sign of insurgent activity in the area at the time of the crash.
The NTSB said it will lead a team of three investigators to assist the Afghanistan Ministry of Transportation and Commercial Aviation in investigating the crash. But a ministry spokesman, Nangoialy Qalatwal, said Tuesday the ministry is not involved with the investigation because it occurred at a military and not a civilian airport.
Kaufman said the plane — owned by National Airlines, an Orlando, Fla.-based subsidiary of National Air Cargo — was carrying vehicles and other cargo.
Elena Garrett, of Jeffersonville, Ind., just across the Ohio River from Louisville, said ex-husband Timothy Garrett would have turned 52 on Saturday. They have two daughters together, ages 11 and 12.
"We're all devastated," Elena Garrett said about his death. "We were still best friends. He's the best father I've ever seen (and) ready to help anybody. He would give the shirt off his back for anybody."
Bill Hasler said his family learned Monday morning that his brother, Brad, was one of the crash victims.
"Brad was a wonderful father to two young children, a beloved husband to a wife who is expecting another child, a loving son, and the most loyal and supportive brother I could have ever asked for," Bill Hasler said in a statement. "His influence in the lives of all of us who loved him is immeasurable, and our grief is indescribable."
National Airlines was based until recently at Michigan's Willow Run Airport, west of Detroit. It carries cargo both commercially and for the military, Kaufman said. She said the company employs about 225 people.
Summan had worked 2? years for National Air Cargo, said his wife, Rajnit Summan.
Rajnit Summan said she last spoke to her husband Sunday.
"I told him to be safe," she said.
___
Joan Lowy reported from Washington. Associated Press writers David N. Goodman in Detroit, Elizabeth Campbell in Louisville, Ky., and Patrick Quinn in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
WARSAW, Poland – A report by Poland's opposition party says Russian aviation officials bear most responsibility for the crash last year of the Polish government plane in which the president was killed.
The Law and Justice party blamed the Russians for allowing the plane to land under almost no visibility and said the crew was provided with incorrect landing parameters.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the president who was killed in the crash, is the party head. The report is independent of two state probes into the crash.
President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others were killed in a plane crash in Russia on April 10, 2010. The official Russian report said the blame rested solely with the Polish pilot, whose decision it was to land.
(CNN) -- The aircraft that Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger heroically landed in New York's Hudson River began its long ride Saturday to an aviation museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Airbus A320, sans its wings and tail section, left a warehouse in Harrison, New Jersey, for the journey south, according to Shawn Dorsch, president of the Carolinas Aviation Museum.
"It's very hard to miss," Dorsch said of the fuselage. "It's not covered."
The museum has invited the 155 crew members and passengers from the "Miracle on the Hudson" incident for a June 11 arrival reception, at which Sullenberger is the scheduled keynote speaker, Dorsch told CNN.
On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 left LaGuardia Airport and ran into a flock of geese that damaged both engines, forcing the crew to make an emergency landing in the frigid Hudson.
Rescuers quickly reached the aircraft and found passengers standing on its wings. Everyone was rescued.
Sullenbeger, who retired in March 2010, and other crew members became instant celebrities.
J. Supor & Son Trucking and Rigging Co. in New Jersey has donated the considerable cost of transporting the aircraft, Dorsch said. About 40 vehicles are in the entourage, which reached Rutgers University later Saturday.
Because the rig's height won't allow the plane to go under older interstate bridges, some of the move will be on other highways, where wires and some stoplights will have to be temporarily moved, Dorsch said.
The plane will be shown off at the Charlotte museum's main hangar.
"It will be on display almost as soon as it arrives," Dorsch said.
US Airways and Airbus mechanics will reassemble the aircraft, including its wings and tail section. Much of that work will be completed by the fall.
Sullenberger's uniform, passenger belongings and other artifacts will be part of the display, he said.
The cabin will look much as it did during the flight, Dorsch added.
Between 30,000 and 35,000 visitors visit the museum annually. Dorsch expects that number will triple within 18 months of the exhibit's opening. Most of the flight's passengers still live in the Charlotte area, he added.
The incident represents the height of technical achievements in safety and human heroism, the museum president said.
Dorsch recalled taking the next flight after Flight 1549 and seeing the plane in the Hudson River.
"I was thinking, 'That could have been me,'" he said.Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button. Read more.Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- Fifteen bodies were recovered Saturday from the wreckage of an airplane that crashed into the ocean while preparing to land in the Indonesian province of West Papua, officials said.
Rescuers were searching for survivors of the Merpati Nusantara Airlines crash just off the coast of Kaimana, said Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for the Indonesian transportation ministry.
There were 21 passengers and six crew members aboard the plane, a turbo-propeller MA60, he said.
Ervan could not immediately confirm any casualties, though a Kaimana Airport ticket agent told CNN that at least 15 bodies have been recovered.
The agent, identified as Polly H., said there were children among the casualties, though she could not say how many.
Among the passengers on the flight were 18 adults, two children and one infant, Ervan said.
Search and rescue teams were still searching the waters off Kaimana for survivors, the ticket agent said.
The plane crashed shortly before 2 p.m. local time. The cause of the crash was under investigation, Ervan said.
Merpati, a cash-strapped state-owned airline with an aging fleet, flies many of the more remote routes in Indonesia.
In 2010, a Merpati airplane overshot the runway at the Rendai airport in Manokwari, West Papua, injuring 78 people.
A year earlier, two Merpati planes crashed within two months of each other in Papua.
The first occurred in July 2009 when a Merpati flight lost its front wheels as it took of from Biak. A month later, another flight -- a Twin Otter aircraft -- crashed, killing 16 people on board.
Indonesia has made efforts in recent years to improve its safety record.CNN's Kathy Quiano contributed to this report.Rome (CNN) -- An apparently agitated passenger attacked a flight attendant on Alitalia Flight 329 from Paris to Rome late Sunday and asked that the flight be diverted to Tripoli, Libya, the airline said.
Other flight attendants immobilized the attacker, Alitalia said, and the plane and its 131 passengers landed safely at Rome's Fiumicino airport, where the attacker was taken into police custody.
The flight attendant was taken to the airport emergency room for a check-up, the airline said.
Italy's state-run ANSA news agency reported the attacker was a man from Kazakhstan and that he attacked the flight attendant with nail clippers.The White House plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama came even closer to a military cargo jet than previously reported, according to a new report from the National Safety Transportation Safety Board.
The close call on Monday night left 2.94 miles of distance between the Obama plane and the 200-ton C-17 jet as they both approached landing at Andrews Air Force base just outside of Washington. Air traffic controllers at Andrews directed Obama's plane to abort a landing, the board said in a statement Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration had previously said there was more than three miles between the planes, and had ordered controllers' supervisors to oversee flights carrying the first lady and the vice president. A supervisor was already required to monitors flights with President Obama on board.
Obama's plane, a Boeing 737, was considerably smaller than the 200-ton C17 ahead of it. Federal regulations require five miles between planes to avoid dangerous wake turbulence when the plane in the lead is significantly larger than the one trailing.
The planes were lined up for their landing approach into Andrews by a controller at a regional radar facility in Warrenton, Va., the board said. The planes were already too close when controllers at Andrews took over.
The Andrews controllers immediately ordered the 737 pilot to execute a series of turns to increase its distance from the cargo plane. When the distance continued to narrow, the controllers directed the 737 pilot to abort the landing and circle the airport until the cargo jet cleared the runway.
On board the plane with Mrs. Obama was Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Biden.
The board also said a Southwest Airlines jet with 142 people aboard came perilously close to a small plane over central Florida last month. The planes, traveling at more than 100 miles per hour, could have closed the short distance within seconds. They were flying at an altitude of about 11,000 feet at the time.
The board said previously that a controller at a regional radar facility near Jacksonville asked the Southwest pilot to fly close enough to look into the cockpit window of the smaller plane, a single-engine, four-seat Cirrus SR22. The Cirrus had been out of radio contact for over an hour.
Both planes landed safety. The controller has been suspended pending an investigation.
Also Friday, National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Paul Rinaldi called on the FAA to allow controllers to sleep on breaks during daytime shifts, and to take scheduled naps of as long as two hours during overnight shifts. Rinaldi also endorsed 10 other recommendations for combating fatigue offered by a working group of agency and union officials.
"If we are serious about addressing controller fatigue, then every recommendation must be adopted and implemented" Rinaldi said.
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood have ruled out any change in policy to allow controllers to nap during work shifts, even on breaks. That's despite the disclosure since late March of at least five incidents of controllers dozing off at work.
Instead, Babbitt has increased by an hour the minimum amount of rest between work shifts. The FAA has also added a second controller on overnight shifts at 27 airports and a radar facility to prevent any more planes from landing without tower assistance because a controller working alone at night has fallen asleep.
Planes flew unguided because of a sleeping controller into Washington's Reagan National airport last month and in Reno, Nev., this month.
Rinaldi, while appreciative of the changes, said "they barely scratch the surface of the problem."
FAA officials declined comment.
The FAA has known for decades that controllers work exhausting schedules that can affect their ability to safely manage air traffic. The sleeping incidents, as well as recent errors by controllers, have shaken public confidence in the nation's air traffic system.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The Federal Aviation Administration has announced new procedures following the aborted landing of a presidential plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama that flew too close to a military cargo jet on Monday.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said that the agency will start requiring a supervisor to monitor movements of flights involving the vice president and first lady, just as the FAA requires for flights carrying President Obama.
"As of today, we are making the same supervisor oversight requirement for VPOTUS and FLOTUS flights in the DC area and at their destinations where possible," she said.
The announcement comes as both the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board launch investigations into the incident. It marked the latest embarrassment for the agency, which is trying to tamp down growing anxiety over flying after suspending nine air traffic controllers and supervisors across the country in recent weeks, including five for sleeping on the job.
Monday's mishap didn't involve a sleeping air traffic controller. Instead, the civilian controller at the regional radar facility in Warrenton, Va., allowed the Obama plane to get too close to an Air Force C-17 plane in front of it.
The FAA requires a minimum separation of 5 miles between planes when the plane in the lead is as large as the 200-ton cargo jet because the turbulence created by the wings can be dangerous to trailing aircraft.
Obama and Jill Biden, wife of the vice president, were aboard a Boeing 737, one of the fleet of presidential passenger jets, returning from an appearance on ABC's "The View" in New York, when the near-collision occurred on final approach to Andrews.
The civilian controller in Warrenton told the military's controller at Andrews that the distance between the planes was 4 miles -- an estimate that turned out to be inaccurate. The distance was just more than 3 miles.
The controllers at Andrews ordered the Obama plane to execute a series of "S-turns" in an effort to increase the distance, but that was ineffective. The military controllers weren't sure there was enough time for the C-17 to get off the runway once it landed before the first lady's plane could land on the same runway. So they instructed the Obama plane to abort its landing.
The FAA said it was investigating the incident as a possible error by controllers at Warrenton and added that the aircraft were never in any danger.
Michelle Obama's office said it would not be commenting on the incident.
After a series of incidents this year involving sleeping air traffic controllers, the FAA official in charge of the U.S. air traffic system resigned last week.
The first disclosed case of a controller falling asleep on duty occurred March 23 at Washington's Reagan National Airport. The most recent was this week, when a controller at a regional radar facility near Cleveland was suspended for watching a movie on a DVD player when he was supposed to be monitoring air traffic.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An Air France Airbus A380 approaches John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 20, 2009. The giant jet clipped a smaller plane on the tarmac Monday night.
EnlargeCloseBy Daniel Acker, BloombergAn Air France Airbus A380 approaches John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 20, 2009. The giant jet clipped a smaller plane on the tarmac Monday night.
There were no injuries when the Air France super jumbo jet touched the other plane at 8:09 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said.Air France Flight 7, bound for Paris, was taxiing on a runway when its left wingtip struck the tail of Comair Flight 6293, which had just landed from Boston and was taxiing to its gate at Kennedy, one of the nation's busiest airports, Peters said.Both jets were being towed to a ramp area for inspection, Peters said. The extent of the damage was unknown.The FAA didn't immediately say how many people were on the double-deck Airbus A380, which can carry 525 passengers in a three-class configuration or more than 850 in a single-class configuration. Air France didn't immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.The Comair CRJ 700 Regional Jet was carrying 62 passengers and four crewmembers, said Betsy Talton, a spokeswoman of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc., for which Comair operates regional flights. All the passengers were taken off the plane and into a terminal, she said.The most serious safety scare for the world's largest and newest jetliners occurred last year, when a Rolls-Royce engine on a Qantas A380 disintegrated shortly after takeoff from Singapore, prompting Qantas to temporarily ground its fleet. A preliminary report blamed the massive engine failure on an oil leak.Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters