By Gary Wiepert
BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) - A passenger plane crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York, in snowy weather on Thursday night and burst into flames, killing 49 people.
The 74-seat commuter plane lost contact with air traffic controllers and went down a few miles (km) before the runway at the Buffalo airport, authorities said.
Federal investigators were en route to the crash site in the Buffalo suburb of Clarence Centre on Friday. Other pilots in the area were concerned about icing in the wet, cold weather, control tower recordings showed.
Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, was travelling from Newark, New Jersey, to Buffalo with 44 passengers and four crew, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
All 48 people on board were killed. One person died in the house but two others escaped with minor injuries, Erie County Executive Chris Collins said.
"At this point there is no information whatsoever as to what the cause may be," Collins said on Friday morning.
There was no sign of a terrorist connection to the crash at about 10:20 p.m. on Thursday (3:20 a.m. British time on Friday), said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Recordings played on U.S. television networks showed the control tower in Buffalo lost contact with the plane as it was set to start its approach. There was no distress signal.
Some residents said the plane hitting the ground felt like an earthquake, while Clarence town supervisor Scott Bylewski said he heard "what sounded like a door slamming."
"I then went outside of my own house and could see that the sky was red," he told reporters.
Colgan Air, a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines, said the plane was a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 made by Canada's Bombardier.
ONLY THE TAIL
"It's remarkable that it only took one house, as devastating as it was," said Dave Bissonette, emergency coordinator for the town of Clarence. "The only recognizable piece of the plane left is the tail."
Bissonette said weather conditions were not unusual for that part of upstate New York at this time of year -- snow, 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) and moderate wind.
Commercial aircraft are equipped with de-icing systems, but safety experts say even a small buildup of ice on the wings can affect aerodynamics.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply saddened" by the accident and Continental Airlines chief executive Larry Kellner extended sympathies to victims' families.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board should be able to recover the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for clues to what caused the crash.
The control tower recordings showed an air traffic controller calling in vain for the flight to respond and then asking for help to find out what happened to it.
"This is ground communication. We need to talk to someone at least five miles northeast ... either state police or sheriff's department. We need to find out if anything is on the ground," he said.
"This aircraft was five miles out and all of a sudden we have no response to that aircraft."
Another voice said: "All I can tell you is the aircraft was over the marker and we're not talking to them now."
The controller then tells other planes the Dash 8 "didn't make the airport."
SAFE PERIOD
It was the first deadly U.S. airline accident since August 2006, when a similar number of people were killed when a Comair jet crashed on takeoff in Kentucky.
The U.S. airline industry has recorded its safest period overall since 2001, flying more than 500 million people annually with three fatal crashes -- all involving smaller regional carriers, not major airlines.
Thursday's disaster came less than a month after the successful crash landing of a US Airways jetliner on the Hudson River in New York City.
All 155 people on board survived after the plane hit birds and pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger brought it down on the river. Passengers and crew were rescued by ferry boats.
(Additional reporting by John Crawley, Randall Mikkelsen and Mohammad Zargham in Washington and Daniel Trotta in New York; Writing by John O'Callaghan; Editing by Frances Kerry and Doina Chiacu)
