A commuter plane crashed in heavy fog Friday night after takeoff from Raleigh-Durham Airport, and all 12 people aboard were feared dead, officials said. American Eagle Flight 378 was en route to Richmond, Va., with 10 passengers and two crew members when it went down in a wooded area at 9:27 p.m. about a mile from the 10,000-foot runway, said airport spokeswoman Teresa Damiano. ``I show them as fatal,'' said V.H. Steed, night duty officer with the Federal Aviation Agency in Atlanta. Witnesses said they heard an explosion and saw a fireball before the twin-engine plane with a seating capacity of 19 went down near a small residential area, Ms. Damiano said. She said no homes were hit. ``There are no anticipated survivors,'' she said. ``Indications are that the plane is in several pieces. There was a small bit of fire that was contained. There was no indication to the tower that the plane was in any danger prior to takeoff.'' Shortly after midnight, a woman was escorted into the terminal sobbing and asking, ``What happened?'' The woman, who declined to give her name, said her 13-year-old son was on the flight. She said she had received no official word on her son's fate. ``It sounded like a blast or something because they've been blasting down on this road, putting in sewer lines, and that's the way it sounded,'' said Mary H. Ward, who lives in a mobile home three miles from the airport. ``It wasn't too awful loud. It was kind of muffled. I wondered what it was, but there was nobody here but me so I didn't go out and look around.'' At Richmond International Airport, several people were waiting for information on the crash and on arrangements for travel to North Carolina, said a ground supervisor for American Airlines who refused to give his name. ``They can't believe it happened,'' said the man. ``Some people wish it was them.'' Most of the passengers were from Richmond, and the crew was based in Raleigh, he said. Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington will arrive Saturday, Steed said. American Eagle, an affiliate of American Airlines, had recently resumed flights from its base at Raleigh-Durham after filing for bankruptcy reorganization Jan. 15. The airline abruptly ceased flights Jan. 14, leaving some passengers stranded. In its bankruptcy filing, AVAir Inc., which operates American Eagle, claimed $9.2 million in assets and $12 million in liabilities.
