Video: 'Terror: 11/12/01 - Crash of Flight 587 in Queens, N.Y.'

(Monday, November 12, 2001, 9:16 a.m. EST) — American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300B4-605R en route to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, crashed this morning into the neighborhood of Belle Harbor, on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York City, shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.

Video: 'WNBC CH 4 Flight 587 Crash Coverage Belle Harbor 11/12/01'

It was the second-deadliest aviation incident involving an Airbus A300 and the second-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history behind the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in 1979.

Video: 'News coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 - WABC ABC7'

The location of the accident, and the fact that it took place two months and one day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in nearby Manhattan, initially spawned fears of another terrorist attack. But the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) attributed the disaster to the first officer’s overuse of rudder controls in response to wake turbulence from a preceding Japan Airlines Boeing 747-400 that took off minutes before it.

Video: 'Air Crash Investigation American Airlines Flight 587 'Queens Catastrophe''

According to the NTSB, the aggressive use of the rudder controls by the first officer stressed the vertical stabilizer until it separated from the aircraft. The airliner’s two engines also separated from the aircraft before impact due to the intense forces.