November 12, 2001: American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, crashes in the Belle Harbor section of Queens, near its takeoff point at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Coming just 2 months after the 9/11 attacks, everyone's first thought was that was more terrorism, but it was due to pilot error causing mechanical failure.
One of the victims, Hilda Yolanda Mayol, survived the 9/11 attacks, having escaped from the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
The plane was headed for Las Américas International Airport, which serves Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Most of the people on board were Dominican-Americans on their way to visit family, or Dominican citizens returning home from so doing.
From the Dominican community in Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan, to the Rockaways in Queens, where the plane went down, killing 260 on board and 5 on the ground, the tragedy hit home (literally) from one end of New York City to the other. It was an awful day, and, had it not been for the 9/11 attacks, it would have been the dominant story of the year in New York City.
Belkis Lora, a relative of a passenger on Flight 587, said, "Every Dominican in New York has either taken that flight or knows someone who has. It gets you there early. At home, there are songs about it."
Seth Kugel, writing for The New York Times, said, "For many Dominicans in New York, these journeys home are the defining metaphor of their complex push-pull relationship with their homeland; they embody, vividly and poignantly, the tug between their current lives and their former selves. That fact gave Monday's tragedy a particularly horrible resonance for New York's Dominicans."
He added, "Even before Monday's crash, Dominicans had developed a complex love-hate relationship with American Airlines, complaining about high prices and baggage restrictions even while favoring the carrier over other airlines that used to travel the same route."
David Rivas, a New York City travel agency owner, said, "For the Dominican to go to Santo Domingo during Christmas and Summer is like the Muslims going to Mecca."
As of November 12, 2022, it remains the 2nd-deadliest plane crash in American history. More people died on this plane than on any of the 4 planes hijacked 2 months earlier.
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November 12, 2001 was a Monday. Baseball season had ended 8 days earlier, when the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.
On ABC Monday Night Football, the Baltimore Ravens beat the Tennessee Titans, 16-10 at Adelphia Coliseum (now Nissan Stadium) in Nashville.
There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Golden State Warriors beat the Memphis Grizzlies, 86-79 at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis. And the Utah Jazz beat the Orlando Magic, 105-98 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
One game was played in the NHL: The Buffalo Sabres beat the Florida Panthers, 5-3 at the National Car Rental Center (now named the Amerant Bank Center) in the Miami suburb of Sunrise, Florida.
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