CHARLOTTE (USA), Jan 8: A commuter plane crashed and exploded on Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, killing all 21 people on board, police and U.S. aviation authorities said.

The Beech 1900 turboprop plane, US Airways Express Flight 5481 operated by Air Midwest, was headed to nearby Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, when it clipped the corner of a US Airways hangar on the airport grounds and burst into flame, officials and witnesses said.

The twin-engine plane carried 19 passengers and two crew members, airport director Jerry Orr told a news conference.

“There were no survivors,” he said.

Three workers on the ground were initially reported missing but were later accounted for and no one in the hangar was hurt, he said.

The last known radio contact with the plane was its clearance for takeoff and there was no indication from air traffic control of any problems at that time, aviation officials said.

Witnesses told reporters the plane had just taken off when it appeared to circle back toward the airport. It burst into flames when it crashed, , sending a thick cloud of smoke over the field.

Orr said the airplane took off to the south and veered left into the hangar. Fire crews doused the flames with foam and charred wreckage could be seen in a 30-metre area of debris just outside the hangar.

“It was an intense fire,” Orr said.

Witness Benjamin Witkege and his girlfriend Erin Murphy told the Charlotte Observer they saw the plane rising at an odd angle from the runway.

“The plane was climbing too steep,” Witkege said. “I told her, ‘It looks like that plane is not doing right.’

“I knew it was crashing,” he said.

It was the first commercial air crash in the United States since an American Airlines jet crashed in November 2001 in New York, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.

The crash temporarily shut down operations at Charlotte’s main international airfield, leaving a host of planes lined up on the tarmac.

The Transportation Security Administration, which took charge of aviation security after the Sept. 11 hijacked aircraft attacks on the United States, was not immediately involved in the investigation because there was “no security issue as far as we know,” said TSA spokeswoman Heather Rosenker.—Reuters