COMMUTER PLANE CRASHES NEAR DETROIT, KILLING 29.

Byline: Associated Press 

A commuter plane trying to land in a snowstorm nose-dived into a field 18 miles short of the Detroit airport Thursday, killing all 29 people aboard.

The twin-engine Embraer 120, operated by Cincinnati-based Comair, went down just before dusk in a huge fireball, splintering into small pieces and leaving a black patch in the snow, which was about 4 inches deep by evening.

``It looked like a bomb went off destroying everything in its path,'' said Dale Zorn, chairman of the local Board of Commissioners.

Cathy Conner, 14, said she was getting off the school bus when she saw the plane go ``straight into the ground.''

``It was just like a blur, it was going so fast. Then I saw the explosion and flames just went everywhere,'' she said.

``You heard this big boom and there was a fireball that went up,'' said Patty Cawood, who also lives nearby. ``By the time we got there, there were still like exploding things, you know, coming out, so we didn't want to get real close.''

Comair said 26 passengers and three crew members were aboard. Sheriff Tilman Crutchfield said there were no survivors.

The pilot of Flight 3272, which originated in Cincinnati, gave no indication of any trouble as the plane prepared to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. A team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived at the crash site Thursday night.

Fire and rescue vehicles converged on the charred wreckage of the 30-seat plane, which went down near a farmhouse and a country road in Raisinville Township, about seven miles west of Monroe. As darkness fell, rescue workers walked through the field with flashlights, looking for wreckage and bodies. Police put a cover over the crash site to make sure no evidence was blown away overnight.

At the Detroit airport, friends and relatives of the passengers were taken to a spot where counselors were available.

Comair said it had identified 20 of the 29 people on board, including the crew: Capt. Dann Carlsen, First Officer Kenneth Reece and flight attendant Darinda Ogden. Carlsen had been with the airline for seven years.

Airline officials said the crew was based in Cincinnati and had made one round-trip flight to Detroit earlier in the day.

Thursday's crash was the second fatal crash in the commuter airline's 20-year history. A twin-engine Piper Navajo crashed at an airport in Kentucky in 1979 after an engine failed on takeoff. Eight people were killed.

The Embraer 120 is a Brazilian-built turboprop. More than 300 of the planes are in use, most in North America, where they are popular with regional and commuter airlines. There have been three fatal U.S. crashes involving the Embraer 120 since 1991.

Comair obtained the plane in 1992, and it had its last major maintenance check Nov. 20, said Charles Curran, Comair senior vice president. ``It did not have any maintenance irregularities,'' he said.

Curran said the Detroit airport reported calm winds and light snow at the time of the crash.