The plane breaks apart in 4 pieces on fire, mechanical malfunction? An American Airlines plane crashed this morning in the Rockaway Beach section of Queens after departing nearby JFK Airport, with authorities leaning towards mechanical malfunction as the cause. American Airlines confirmed it was Flight 587, an Airbus A300, headed for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. All 246 passengers and nine crew members on board are presumed to have died. The plane went down about five miles from the airport around 9:17 am, three minutes after takeoff. Although some people reported seeing and hearing an explosion, most eyewitnesses said they saw the plane break apart without a blast, according to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "I looked out the window and there was the plane going down, nose first, the belly facing us, going straight down," said one Rockaways resident who witnessed the crash. "It was intact. The wings were there, the tail was there, the nose was there. There was no smoke coming from it against the blue sky. It was just a huge silver plane going straight down." "All of a sudden the house shook. I thought it was an earthquake, and then I saw the plane. I went outside and it was just a huge plume of smoke," added another eyewitness. There are also conflicting reports as to whether one of the engines fell from the fuselage midair before the plane itself nose-dived into the ground. A large piece of an engine was found six feet short of a Texaco station’s gas tanks, about four