Cause Determined for Flight 587 Crash

NEW YORK -- Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration this week released the official cause of a plane crash that killed more than 250 people last week.

The plane stopped flying.

"After assessing information provided by the flight data recorder, we were able to determine that the plane crashed in Queens after it fell from the sky," a top-ranking investigator said on the condition of anonymity.

The findings correlate with eyewitness reports from the ground. The crash occured in a residential neighborhood in Queens minutes after take off from Kennedy Airport. Many residents said they saw the plane lose an engine before it hit the ground. All, however, said the plane did in fact start in the sky and then fall to the ground. Investigators said the lost engine and a broken tail section may have contributed to the crash, but clearly, it wasn't the main factor.

"The plane crashed because it stopped flying," one investigator said. "If the plane would have kept flying despite the engine and the tail, the plane wouldn't have crashed. It would have kept flying."