One Teenager Survives

Six of the seven people aboard a Beech King Air BE200 died today when it slammed into a building as it prepared to land at an airport in Massachusetts.

Witnesses said a young woman simply walked out the wreckage of the aircraft looking dazed.

The plane went down shortly after 9.30am EST, hitting a sheet-metal shop in the north-central Massachusetts town of Leominster, officials said. All employees in the building managed to get out safely after the impact, which erupted into a fireball. One of the shop's workers suffered minor injuries but was treated and released from hospital.

The BE200 (file photo, right) left LaGuardia Airport in New York earlier in the morning headed for Massachusetts, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.

"Of the seven people on board, there was only one survivor," the FAA spokesman said.

Word of the crash, which came more than a year and a half after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington, sent jitters through financial markets, but officials were quick to rule out terrorism.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov/aviation/aviation.htm