3. A bridge toll booth camera captured one of the only real-time videos available of American Airlines Flight 587’s crash
Just two months after September 11th, 2001, aviation terror struck New York City once more with the crash of American Airlines flight 587 in Belle Harbor, Queens The accident killed 265 people en route to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Two tollbooth cameras on the northwest portion of the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge captured the incident, showing a very blurry scene of a white streak behind the plane as it descended rapidly.
The video from the bridge captures what was the second deadliest crash in United States aviation history. The National Transportation Safety Board used the video in an investigation into what caused the plane to crash. The video is one of the only real-time videos available of the moments leading up to the tragedy. The findings of the NTSB investigation were that due to pilot error, the aircraft’s tail fin and engines became detached during the flight.
