Report: Toll booth video tape may shed new light on Flight 587 crash

Sunday, January 27th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ A newly discovered and very detailed surveillance video from a tollbooth may reveal new information about the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, according to a published report.

Citing unidentified government sources, Time magazine reports in this week's issue that the camera captured the entire catastrophe that sent the Airbus A300-600 crashing into a residential neighborhood in Queens, killing all 260 people on the plane and five on the ground.

The plane crashed Nov. 12 three minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport. It can be seen ``flying along normally and intact, and suddenly things start to go very wrong,'' a source at the National Transportation Safety Board told Time.

Safety investigators have said the tail fin, or vertical stabilizer, on the plane fell off before it slammed into the neighborhood.

NTSB analysts are optimistic the new footage will provide more clues as to how the plane began to break apart and how its tail section separated from the body of the jet, Time reported.