From staff and wire reports
PARIS -- An Air France Concorde crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff, slamming into a hotel in the town of Gonesse north of Paris on Tuesday afternoon, local firefighters and witnesses said.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the passengers and crew.
France's LCI television quoted eyewitnesses as saying that the plane apparently had caught fire before it crashed into the hotel in Gonesse, not far from Charles de Gaulle airport.
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Concorde info:
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The Concorde jet is capable of traveling from Paris to New York in three hours, 45 minutes at a cruising speed of Mach 2 or 1,370 miles per hour.
Capacity: Its seating capacity is 100 passengers and it usually has a crew of nine.
Daily service between New York and Paris started in 1977.
The Concorde holds two world speed records for commercial flights. In 1992, it circled the globe from east to west in 32 hours, 49 minutes and three seconds. Three years later, the Concorde flew west to east in 31 hours, 27 minutes and 49 seconds.
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France Info radio quoted another eyewitness as saying that the plane's motor was on fire and that a huge cloud of black smoke went up in the air. The crash took place shortly before 5 p.m. (1500 GMT).
The eyewitnesses said the aircraft was not able to gain sufficient altitude before it crashed, and that police were keeping onlookers away from the site.
"The airplane was struggling to climb and obviously couldn't get altitude," eyewitness Sid Hare, a pilot for Federal Express, told CNN by telephone from France.
"He (the pilot) kept raising the nose ... and the airplane stalled, the nose went straight up into the air and the airplane actually rolled over to the left and almost inverted when it went down in huge fireball when it hit (the ground.)"
Hare said the crash occurred about two miles from the hotel where he is staying.
The plane was heading to New York, and there were apparently about 100 people on board.
British Airways said Monday said it had found cracks in the wings of some of its supersonic aircraft but said there was no danger to passengers.
No other details were immediately available.
Paris Bureau Chief Peter Humi and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
