Article Posted on : - Feb 14, 2009

President Obama shakes hands with Beverly Eckert during a meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with a group who lost family members in terrorist attacks on 9/11 and USS Cole. White House pix

NEW YORK: A widow of a 9/11 terrorist attack victim was among the 49 people on board a US airliner which crashed into a house near New York's suburb of Buffalo.

Beverly Eckert was traveling to Buffalo for a weekend celebration of what would have been her husband's 58th birthday, a media report said. Her husband Sean Rooney was killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Buffalo News reported that Eckert had also planned to take part in presentation of a scholarship award at Canisius High School that she established in honour of her late husband. She had met President Barack Obama a few days before the crash.

"We know she was on that plane," Eckert's sister Sue Bourque said, adding "and now she's with him".

Bourque, however, said the family had not yet received official confirmation of her sister's fate.

The state police said that there were 48 people on board and "there were no survivors," in the crash that occurred at 0840 IST Friday, five minutes before the plane was due to land.

Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, was en route from Newark, New Jersey, when it went down, officials said. (PTI)