Plane Crashes Into Neighborhood

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By APTN/Sky News

M50o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr Plane Crashes Into Neighborhood

Published: Sun, March 30, 2008 - 2:32 pm
Last Updated: Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 2:41 pm

A small plane carrying five people crashed into a residential area south of London on Sunday, police and rescue officials said.

There were no survivors.

The private plane crashed into a house in Broadwater Gardens in Farnborough, just south of London sometime after 2:30 pm (1330 GMT), officials said.

The neighborhood is a couple of kilometers (miles) north of Biggin Hill Airport, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from central London.

The small airport is often used by executive jets and helicopters.

Smoke could be seen rising from the smoldering brick house on the edge of woodland in images shown on Britain's Sky News.

Fire trucks surrounded the house, which appeared to have been half destroyed.

Emergency services were on the scene, a police spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.

The plane crashed in a neighborhood called Broadwater Gardens, he said.

Farnborough airport is also used mostly by private planes, and it hosts the biannual Farnborough International Airshow, one of the aviation industry's biggest events.

Sky News television said the plane was a Cessna Citation Executive Jet and was headed to France.

It did not cite a source for the information.

A pilot, who gave his name only as John, told Sky he was about to land at Biggin Hill when a mayday call came over the radio from the plane that crashed.

John told Sky he believed the accident might have been caused by a bird which may have been sucked in the engine, or a mechanical failure.

"My suspicion, one of the most likely events, is on takeoff perhaps a bird has got sucked into the engine," he said.

"As the jets are taking off they've got their engines at full power. All jets do, it's not a healthy state for jet engines to be in and they only maintain that for a couple of minutes while they take off and it's possibly while at full power something may have gone wrong within the engine as well," he added.

But he didn't exclude other possible causes for the crash.

The pilot from the stricken plane said the aircraft was experiencing severe engine vibrations and alarms could be heard going off in the cockpit, John said.

The pilot said he had five people onboard and wanted to make an emergency landing, he added.

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