Emergency Landing of MD-83

The engine of an American Airlines jet broke apart in midair and showered a Queens neighborhood with shards of turbine blades as it made an emergency landing Wednesday. Luckily, no one was hurt on the Chicago-bound plane or on the ground, though pieces of the MD-83 hit a warehouse and cracked the windshields of two parked cars in College Point.

"We heard a very loud explosion followed by 30 seconds of debris raining down," said Bob Bellini, who owns Varsity Plumbing and Heating Corp. on 123rd St.

The twin-engine plane, carrying 88 passengers and five crew members, took off from LaGuardia around 8 a.m. The pilot reported trouble with the right engine minutes later, reversed course and made a beeline for Kennedy Airport.

"Captain got on and said we lost an engine and would be doing an emergency landing at Kennedy Airport," one passenger told WNBC's "News 4 New York." "[I] thought about my wife and children and just was praying that we would land safely."

The engine turbine failed but the blades did not pierce the cowling, the metal covering around the engine, or the plane's fuselage, officials said.

The aircraft was built to spit out pieces of the blades during a failure and it appears that's what it did, said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson.

A repair history for the plane, built in 1999, was not immediately available. The Federal Aviation Administration had no record of accidents, but the model was grounded last April because of hydraulic problems.

MD-83s are a newer version of the MD-80s. Queens Borough President Helen Marshall said the series is outdated, bad for the environment and potentially dangerous.

"We are lucky no one was hurt here," she said in College Point. "They certainly need to be taken out of operation."

American spokesman Tim Smith, however, defended the model. "These aircraft are fully safe," he said.