Featured Image Credit: Diane Miller/NYPD/Getty Images
Topics: World News, US News
Mia Williams
A chilling audio clip that hears a frantic discussion between pilots captures the final devastating moments of American Airlines 587.
Just two months after the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 - considered one of the world's deadliest terrorist attacks - another tragic plane crash sent shock waves through America.
American Airlines Flight 587, a regular direct flight from New York's JFK International Airport to Las Americas International Airport in the Dominican Republic, crashed shortly after takeoff on 12 November, 2001.
It was heading for the capital of the Dominican Republic, but it never made the distance, smashing into the Queens neighbourhood of Belle Harbour.
A total of 265 people involved in the crash died, which was made up of the 251 passengers, 9 crew members, and five individuals on the ground.
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The incident was ruled to have been an accident by the National Transportation Safety Board.
They concluded that it had been due to both a pilot error and a design flaw on the aircraft.
More than two decades on from the tragedy, a distressing audio clip has been circulating online, which depicts the final moments when pilots finally lost control of the plane.
In the clip, the aircraft’s first officer can be heard asking the captain if he is alright.
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The first officer then says: “Hang onto it, hang onto it.”
The captain asks for ‘full power’, but this is when the aircraft’s vertical stabiliser breaks.
The captain shouts: “What the hell were you do-! I’m stuck in it!” as the first officer responds: “Get out of it, get out it!”
These were the final words shared between them before the plane smashed into the ground.
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According to the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, the primary cause of the accident was due to the loss of the vertical stabiliser, attributed to the first officer's unnecessary manipulation of the rudder controls when encountering turbulence at around 1,700 feet (518 m) in the air.
A relative of one of the victims, Belkis Lora, told The Guardian: “Every Dominican in New York has either taken that flight or knows someone who has.
“It gets you there early. At home, there are songs about it.”
Seth Kugel of The New York Times, added: “For many Dominicans in New York, these journeys home are the defining metaphor of their complex push-pull relationship with their homeland; they embody, vividly and poignantly, the tug between their current lives and their former selves.”