Airplane Accidents West Germany

A West German commuter airliner, bombarded by lightning and hail, exploded in a fireball and crashed, killing all 21 people aboard, authorities said. Witnesses said a wing fell off the plane, a twin-engine turboprop FA-4 Metroliner, just before the craft crashed in a rural area near Muelheim, about 7 miles north of its destination, the Duesseldorf airport. One witness said the sound of lightning striking the plane "was as if a giant pounded on a sheet of steel with a large hammer."

A U.S. jetliner made an emergency landing in Frankfurt, West Germany, and an Air-India Boeing 747 aborted a takeoff from the Rome airport after sea gulls were sucked into two of the engines, causing them to catch fire. An American Airlines Boeing 767 bound for Chicago and Los Angeles with 175 aboard returned to Frankfurt immediately after takeoff when one of its two engines caught fire. Four passengers were injured slightly in leaving the plane.

A private plane "dropped like a stone" into a busy part of the city Tuesday, killing six people, injuring 14 and setting a fire that consumed a McDonald's restaurant and a city bus, officials said. Walter Hermann, press officer for Munich police, said all three occupants of the plane were killed along with a bicyclist and two people in the McDonald's parking lot. At least 10 of the injured were on the bus.

A French Mirage F-1 fighter plane crashed Wednesday while on a low-flying exercise near Koblenz in West Germany, the French Defense Ministry said. It was the fourth French air force Mirage to crash in three weeks. The pilot ejected safely, the statement said.

A Canadian armed forces T-33 jet trainer plane crashed Tuesday in the Eifel Hills near Coblenz, killing both crewmen.

Fourteen people were injured, one seriously, when a plane skidded off the runway after landing at Munich airport Thursday, police said.