Mo. Plane Crash Kills 13 of 15

Emergency crews searched woods and open fields early Wednesday for possible survivors of a commuter plane crash that killed 13 people but left two others with only broken bones.

The American Airlines-affiliated Corporate Airlines plane, a twin-engine turboprop, crashed in the woods a few miles short of the Kirksville airport where it was preparing to land. Five people were missing for awhile, but later were determined to be dead.

One survivor, a 44-year-old woman, was walking around when rescuers arrived at the crash scene, and ba 68-year-old man was found alive in brush about 25 feet from the fuselage.

"We see car accidents with worse injuries coming in here every week," said Dr. Charles Zeman, director of trauma services at Northeast Regional Medical Center. "This is truly a miracle."

Zeman said the male survivor broke his left hip and a bone in his lower back. The woman suffered a compound fracture of right arm and mild to severe burns over 8 percent of her body. Both were in stable condition.

Several of the victims were on their way to a medical conference, said Philip Slocum, dean and vice president for medical affairs at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The wreckage was scattered over an area about 1 mile across, but the two survivors were discovered "so close to the plane we're imagining the others probably should have been close to the plane if they survived," Adair County Chief Deputy Larry Logston said.

The plane — Corporate Airlines Flight 5966 — was on a regular route from St. Louis with 13 passengers and two crew members aboard when it crashed shortly after 7:50 p.m., said Elizabeth Isham Cory, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Chicago.

The plane clipped treetops before crashing on its belly. Emergency crews found the fuselage engulfed in flames and largely intact, with the wings broken off nearby, Logston said.

Eight of the dead were found in the fuselage, some still in their seats and the two crew members in the cockpit area, he said.

Two victims were from the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey-based Arnold P. Gold Foundation, said Barbara Packer, the foundation's managing director. Another passenger was Dr. Steve Z. Miller, the director of pediatric emergency medicine at New York's Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, according to his office.

Al Maglio, a photographer who was among the first at the scene, said a woman ran up to the emergency workers, told them she had been in the plane and said, "It came apart before it hit the ground."

The last communication from the Jetstream 32 indicated it was on a normal approach to Kirksville Regional Airport in northeastern Missouri, and there was no mention of any problems, Cory said.

"There was no distress signal, no sign there were any problems aboard the aircraft," said Missouri state trooper Brent Bernhardt.

As CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Sanchez reports, the answers to what happened in those final moments lie scattered across a mile of heavy brush.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived at the airport Wednesday morning and recovered both of the plane's flight data recorders.

Thunderstorms were reported in the area at the time of the crash, but it wasn't immediately known if weather was a factor.

Corporate Airlines, based in Smyrna, Tennessee, provides 70 flights from 13 cities in the Midwest to St. Louis and Nashville as AmericanConnection, affiliated with American Airlines.

Doug Caldwell, Corporate Airlines' CEO, said the crash was the airline's first fatal accident. "It's far too early ... to know the cause of this tragic accident," Caldwell said Wednesday after arriving in Kirksville.

Kirksville is about 220 miles northwest of St. Louis.