US investigators said today initial information from the cockpit voice recorder found in the wreckage of an American Airlines plane indicated yesterday's crash was an accident and not sabotage.
"The cockpit voice recorder is the biggest information that we have and a quick listen to that last evening in Washington showed nothing that would imply any sort of unusual activity in the cockpit other than the accident sequence," said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Mr George Black.
Speaking on ABC's Good Morning Americashow, Mr Black said there were no unknown voices in the cockpit before Flight 587 crashed, just two minutes after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport en route to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
"There was nothing on the tape that would lead us to believe that it was anything other than an aviation accident," he said.
There had been speculation the crash may have been linked to the September 11th attacks in the United States.
Up to 269 people died in the crash in a residential area in the borough of Queens in New York. Of those killed, 251 were passengers and nine were crew aboard the aircraft. Nine people are missing on the ground.