Communications with an American Airlines plane that crashed Monday in a residential area of New York City were normal, the White House said.
"All communications were normal prior to the crash," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
"By all first reports, there were no unusual communications between the cockpit and the tower at (John F. Kennedy International Airport) or the New York facility that was handed over communications after the plane departed from the airport area," he told reporters.
He added that the cockpit flight recorder, or black box, from the doomed Airbus A-300 en route from New York to the Dominican Republic had not yet been recovered.
Fleischer acknowledged that contact with the plane had been lost about four minutes after it took off as earlier reported by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) but stressed there had been no threats against it.
"An airplane crashed and when airplanes crash, they go below radar ability to see them and so that you do lose contact," he said. "Clearly, contact was lost."
"But were there any conversations between the pilot and any of the towers or the communications facilities that would have indicated any trouble that the pilots were aware of? The answer to that, based on all preliminary reviews, is no.” -- AFP
