the airport at the former site of Ravenswood Airport, which was used for storage. The aircraft was destroyed by the impact force and ignition of a nearly full load of of fuel; no sizable components other than the engines and tail section remained. In addition to the 271 people on board the aircraft, two employees at a nearby repair garage were killed, and two more were severely burned. The crash site is a field located northwest of the intersection of Touhy Avenue (Illinois Route 72) and Mount Prospect Road on the border of the suburbs of Des Plaines and Mount Prospect, Illinois. Investigation The disaster and investigation received widespread media coverage. The impact on the public was increased by the dramatic effect of an amateur photo taken of the aircraft rolling that was published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on the Sunday two days after the crash. Engine separation Witnesses to the crash were in universal agreement that the aircraft had not struck any foreign objects on the runway. In addition, no pieces of the wing or other aircraft components were found along with the separated engine, other than its supporting pylon; this would lead investigators to conclude that nothing else had broken free from the airframe and struck the engine. Hence, the engine/pylon assembly separation could only have resulted from a structural failure. The cockpit instrument panels were damaged so badly that they did not provide any useful information. During the investigation, an examination of the pylon attachment points revealed some damage done to the wing's pylon mounting bracket that matched the bent shape of the pylon's rear attachment fitting. This meant that the pylon attachment fitting had struck the mounting bracket at some point. This was important evidence, as the only way the pylon fitting could strike the wing's mounting bracket in the observed manner was if the bolts that held the pylon to the wing had been removed. The engine/pylon assembly was supported by something other than the aircraft itself. Therefore, investigators could now conclude that the observed damage to the rear pylon mount had been present before the crash occurred rather than being caused by it. The NTSB determined that the damage to the left-wing engine pylon had occurred during an earlier engine change at the American Airlines aircraft maintenance facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, between March 29 and 30, 1979. On those dates,