PILOT'S CALM WORDS SHATTERED BY CRASH

Capt. Wallace Majure pushed the throttle on the twin-engine Fokker jet for what should have been an 80-minute flight to Cleveland.

Instead, the plane barely made it to the end of La Guardia Airport's 7,000-foot runway - one of the shortest in the country at a major airport - before it crashed in a ball of fire into the frigid, dark waters of Flushing Bay.Majure, 44, died. He had 8,000 hours of flying, including two years as captain of the Fokker F-28 Model 4000. His co-pilot, John Rachuba of Charlotte, N.C., with 3,500 hours of flight experience, was fished alive from the plane after portions of it submerged.

Of the remaining crew, flight attendant Debra Taylor survived with a broken leg. Her colleague, Janice King, was killed.

Such is the fickle nature of disaster. This time 24 people survived - among them soap opera actor Richard Lawson, who plays the character Lucas Barnes on ABC's ``All My Children' - and 27 died.

``A terrible tragedy,' said USAir president Seth Schofield of doomed Flight 405, which crashed at 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

A spring storm was leaving patches of snow on runway 13-31. It was a bit foggy. The temperature was 31 degrees.

The Charlotte-based flight crew was coming off a 16-hour rest when it went to work Sunday afternoon. It took a plane from Raleigh-Durham International to Jacksonville, Fla., via Charlotte. Then, it was on to New York before it was to continue to Cleveland.

These short-to-medium flight distances are what the Fokker was designed for. This particular plane, one of 40 Fokkers owned by USAir, was relatively new. Purchased in 1985, it had flown for 12,000 hours. Its left engine was replaced in 1990; the right one last April. Neither of the Rolls Royce jet engines had more than 3,000 hours on it.

Flight 405 was 40 minutes late leaving Florida, taking off at 5:15 p.m. It landed in New York at 7:49 p.m., 66 minutes late. It was to have departed La Guardia at 7:20 and landed in Cleveland at 9:05.

Tardiness is not uncommon on any Sunday at one of the nation's busiest airports, especially in bad weather. Just one more thing the passengers had to contend with.

Among them were Thoral and Virginia Mitchell of Cleveland, who tried to outflank congestion at their scheduled departure point in Westchester, north of New York, by rescheduling from La Guardia.

Mitchell, 60, a physical therapist, was a contestant Sunday afternoon in a paddle tennis tournament. He and his wife had visited with their daughter, Tracy, 32.

Ticket agents balked at allowing the Mitchells to change plans, but Virginia Mitchell was a lawyer. She argued until she and her husband got booked on coach seats on Flight 405. They did not survive.

While the plane waited at its gate, it was de-iced twice, at 8:29 and again at 8:59. Crews hosed the plane's wings and body.

Majure, in a reassuring voice before departure, comforted the passengers by saying he asked for a second shot of de-icing just to be on the safe side, passengers said.

At 9 p.m., the plane left the gate and headed to the taxi queue; it waited nearly 30 minutes before being cleared for takeoff.

When Majure pushed the throttle, the jet rolled down the runway. From passenger accounts, it struggled a few feet off the tarmac, then tilted to the left and slammed back down on the runway. Momentum drove it over a 10-foot embankment designed to hold back high tides. The plane's nose, one wing and an engine were sheared off and scattered on the ground.

The first five rows ended up underwater in the bay. The wreckage was so twisted the fuselage was turned belly up and its top sheared off. The tail section, stood out at a crooked angle.

``I was floating in the water because the seats float. I opened my eyes but there was no plane over me. I was next to it,' said a 23-year-old woman from Solon, Ohio, who identified herself only by the name Laura. She was buckled into seat 4A, a window seat.

She said she found herself standing in waist-deep water, helping another passenger with a broken ankle out of the plane.

The woman said she didn't know how she got away so easily. ``I don't know how. It's a miracle.'