Flight recorder found at Pennsylvania crash site

Investigators are reported to have found one of the so-called "black boxes" from United Airlines Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania two days ago. The news came from CNN a short time ago.

Commercial aircraft carry two of the boxes: a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder. It is not known which of the two devices was recovered.
In Washington, signals are being picked up from a flight data recorder from American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon.

The US Defense Department says 126 people are still missing two days after the hijacked Boeing 757 slammed into the Pentagon, suggesting a possible death toll of about 190 at US military headquarters, including the 64 people aboard the commandeered flight.

Officials said they were zeroing in on the aircraft's black boxes, which could shed new light on the attack that punched a gaping hole in the huge, five-sided complex.

"We have ideas where it is," Bob Blecksmith, special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, told reporters touring the building's fire-scorched wedge. "That's obviously an important issue."

The first official tally of the missing was far lower than the worst-case scenario of up to 800 cited shortly after Tuesday's blitz by Fire Chief Ed Plaugher of Arlington County, Virginia, where the Pentagon is located.

The highest-ranking victim appears to have been a three-star general who was the Army's personnel chief, a defense official said.

The department said its tally was preliminary. If accurate, the final toll could be 190, including those aboard the American Airlines Boeing 757 seized by knife-wielding hijackers.

All aboard the aircraft, seized after leaving nearby Dulles International Airport en route to Los Angeles, were presumed dead.

The attack on the nerve centre of the world's mightiest military coincided with assaults that destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers in Manhattan and with the crash in western Pennsylvania of another hijacked plane.

- REUTERS, HERALD STAFF

Full coverage: Terror in America

Pictures: Day 1 | Day 2

Brooklyn Bridge live webcam

Video

The fatal flights

Emergency telephone numbers for friends and family of victims and survivors

United Airlines: 0168 1800 932 8555

American Airlines: 0168 1800 245 0999

NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade: 0800 872 111

US Embassy in Wellington (recorded info): 04 472 2068

Survivor databases

Air New Zealand announcements

Air NZ flight information: 0800 737 000.