Amazon Prime Jetliner Just Disintegrated

Authorities are beginning to work through the wreckage of Atlas Air flight 3591
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 24, 2019 4:40 PM CST
Updated Feb 25, 2019 3:33 AM CST
Jetliner Plummeted Nearly 12K Feet in 30 Seconds
Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne gives an update on a plane crash in Trinity Bay during a news conference in Anahuac, Texas, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019.   (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)

The Boeing 767 cargo plane fell 11,750 feet in roughly 30 seconds—and when it struck Trinity Bay in Texas, all three people on board were killed. Media reports are revealing that and more about a jet airliner that apparently nose-dived Saturday and left a heartbreaking trail of debris in the bay near Anahuac. Unofficially, the deceased are Capt. Sean Archuleta of Houston, Capt. Ricky Blakely of Indiana, and First Officer Conrad Jules Aska of Antigua, per the Houston Chronicle. "She's devastated," a friend says of Archuleta's wife; Archuleta, 36, had just landed a dream job at United Airlines. "They just had their baby. I'm not an emotional guy, but this tore me up today. I lost a guy that I truly looked forward to opening the door and seeing. I miss the guy. I miss him already."

Contracted by Amazon Prime, Atlas Air flight 3591 was going from Miami to Houston when the Federal Aviation Administration lost radio and radar contact with it roughly 30 miles southeast of Bush Continental Airport. The plane hit an area known for duck-hunting just before 12:45pm, the FAA says, with some witnesses saying they heard the engines sputter and others describing a loud thunderclap, per KOMO News. But the cause remains unknown. Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne says he believes they'll be recovering the black box, plane parts, and bodies from the scene for weeks: "The problem that everybody is going to have in this recovery process is that the water goes from 5-feet deep to zero and that 0-feet deep is nothing but mud marsh," he tells ABC13. (More plane crash stories.)

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