153 Feared Dead in Detroit Crash : Jet Bound for Orange County Falls in Fireball on Takeoff, Hits Road

ROMULUS, Mich. — A Northwest Airlines jetliner with 153 people on board crashed in a giant fireball on a busy highway Sunday night as it was taking off from Detroit Metropolitan Airport bound for Phoenix and Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.

Wayne County Executive Edward McNamara said that six people on the ground were injured, but he believes everyone aboard the twin-engine jet perished.

The fiery crash left a half-a-mile-long trail of ashen gray debris along Middlebelt Road, a major north-south highway on the eastern edge of the airport complex. Three people were hospitalized with burns, including a little girl, and at least two of them were known to have been on the ground when the burning plane hit.

See Engine Explode

Air traffic controllers in the Detroit tower told investigators that they saw the left engine--mounted on the plane’s fuselage between the wing and the tail--explode and catch fire as the craft, seemingly in trouble from the time it was airborne, dipped from side to side.

“The plane was banking left, then right, then left. There was an explosion in the left engine, then fire,” a federal official told The Times.

The jetliner hit a one-story Avis Car Rental office on the northeast corner of the airport and crashed on the roadway.

The burning fuselage, crumpled and breaking apart, slid for half a mile along the northbound lanes of Middlebelt, sliding under two highway overpasses, including I-94, the major interstate linking Chicago and Detroit. The interstate was littered with bits and pieces of the plane and closed to traffic.

Originating in Saginaw, Mich., the plane, a MD-80--an updated version of the DC-9--was Northwest’s Flight 255. It stopped in Detroit before heading west. It carried 153 passengers and crew.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and other federal and Michigan agencies were scheduled to begin their inquiry into the crash today. Authorities said that the plane’s flight and voice recorders were recovered at the crash site.

‘Total Ball of Fire’

“The left wing touched the ground or some building,” said Joel Taylor, a witness to the crash who was interviewed by Cable News Network. “I don’t know what it touched but I just saw sparks. I looked up, it fell off and the rest of the plane went right underneath a highway overpass. There was nothing but a total ball of fire under the bridge.”

Bodies and charred wreckage were strewn along the highway illuminated by eerie small fires that still burned an hour after the crash, although the main fire was extinguished minutes after the crash by airport fire crews.

“When it hit the ground, it just crumbled like a piece of paper,” Taylor said.

Wayne County Undersheriff Warren Evans said that the debris of at least two cars was found in the wreckage but he believed that more cars may have been involved in the crash.

Karen Pointon, 22, of Romulus told the Associated Press that she and her fiance watched the plane crash about 1,500 feet from the back of her home.

“All you could see was the street glitter with flames. We saw a big ball of yellow flames roll down the street,” she said.

She said that a small truck was hit by debris from the plane and caught fire near her house. They were unable to extinguish the flames. They said that they saw one body inside the truck.

It was Detroit’s worst air disaster in Metropolitan Airport’s 30-year history and the second at the airport this year. Last March 4, a Northwest Airlink commuter plane lost power and crash on landing, killing seven and injuring 13.

Sunday night’s crash capped almost a year of problems for Northwest Airlines that began after its merger with Republic Airlines. In fact, Detroit, one of Northwest’s two largest hubs, has been the scene of repeated problems between the airline and some of its union workers.

In January, the FBI confirmed that it was investigating alleged tampering with Northwest planes at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and earlier this month the airline increased its reward for information on tampering with aircraft or ground equipment to $25,000 from $5,000.

The Associated Press said that Northwest declined to comment earlier this month when asked if the airline was having vandalism problems.

However, in July the Detroit Free Press reported that Northwest hired private security guards at Metropolitan Airport after experiencing minor acts of vandalism against ground equipment.

And, in early August, the airline said that flights were being delayed because of an alleged slowdown by some members of the International Assn. of Machinists, a claim that union officials have denied.

Northwest ranks second, behind Continental Airlines, in the number of customer complaints filed with the U.S. Transportation Department for the first six months of this year, a contention the airline is challenging.

Northwest, which serves 130 cities in 38 states and 18 countries, reported a 1987 first-quarter loss of $35 million, compared to a loss of $16.4 million for the same period a year ago. In 1986, the airline had a profit of $76.94 million.

James Risen reported from Detroit and Larry Green from Chicago.