A woman who survived the crash of an aircraft on Saturday spent hours in the ocean off the U.S. Virgin Islands before being rescued and crews were searching for three other people six miles south of St. Thomas, the Coast Guard said.

The twin-engine Piper Aztec had been delivering newspapers to St. Croix and picked up passengers before heading back to St. Thomas, David Mapp, interim Virgin Islands Port Authority executive director, told The Associated Press.

The Piper was reported overdue at 7:50 a.m. Saturday, Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad, based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, told NBC News. He said it was unclear when the aircraft took off.

Aircraft in the area, including a C-130 Hurricane Hunter tracking Tropical Storm Rafael, reported a debris field, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

A Coast Guard helicopter spotted Valerie Jackson in the water about 2 p.m. local time and directed a Virgin Islands Department of Natural Resources boat to her. She told her rescuers that another woman and two men had been on the aircraft and she was taken to St. Thomas for treatment, the Coast Guard said.

The AP reported that Federal Aviation Administration records showed the plane's certification status had been terminated.

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Authorities say a small plane has plummeted into a residential neighborhood on New York's Long Island in a fiery crash, and one of the three people aboard has died.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen says the aircraft hit the ground shortly before noon Sunday near a residential area in Shirley, about a mile north of Brookhaven Calabro Airport.

Read the original story at NBC New York

Suffolk County police say one person has died, and two others have been taken to Stony Brook University Medical Center with burns.

Their conditions aren't immediately available. The names of the people in the plane haven't been released, and it's not immediately clear whether the pilot is among the injured.

The FAA had no immediate information on the plane.

Witnesses say neighbors tried to douse the flames with fire extinguishers and garden hoses.

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John Brecher / msnbc.com

A crowd in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle watches NASA's Super Guppy aircraft approach Boeing Field, carrying a key piece of a space shuttle mockup that will go on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

SEATTLE — It may not be a real space shuttle, but it's ours.

Today NASA delivered a key piece of the mockup that astronauts used for space shuttle practice to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, my hometown. And it arrived aboard one of the most ungainly-looking airplanes ever built. The wingless mockup is known as the Full Fuselage Trainer, or FFT. The plane has a nickname that's more colorful: the Super Guppy.

The Super Guppy looks more like a Super Whale. The wide-body turboprop airplane has a cargo hold that's been built up into a bulbous shape, specifically to carry big stuff for outer space. Only five of the Guppies were ever produced, and they were used to cart spacecraft components around for the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and shuttle programs. This Super Guppy is the only one of its kind still flying, and this week's odyssey with the most important piece of the Full Fuselage Trainer is one of the highest-profile flights the plane has ever taken.

For decades, the plywood-built FFT sat in a building at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The crew compartment — the part of the structure that was flown to Seattle today — was outfitted with all the buttons, switches, cockpit displays and middeck lockers that the real shuttles had. None of those gadgets worked, but they helped the astronauts get familiar with the layout before they started handling the real controls. Astronauts could also practice how they'd get out of the shuttle in the event of a landing-strip emergency.

With the end of the space shuttle era, NASA's Johnson Space Center no longer needed the FFT, so the space agency decided to donate it for display. The Seattle museum made a play for one of the flown shuttles, and even built a shuttle-sized, 15,500-square-foot Space Gallery to display it in. But Seattle lost out to Florida, California, New York and the "other Washington" in the competition for Atlantis, Endeavour, Enterprise and Discovery. The Full Fuselage Trainer served as the consolation prize.

Most of the FFT's plywood parts could be shipped up by traditional means for later assembly, but the shuttle crew compartment had to be transported all in one piece. That's why NASA's Super Guppy was called into service.

The airplane has a 25-foot-high, 25-foot-wide, 111-foot-long cargo compartment — big enough to hold the mockup's most awkward piece, even when it's bound up in shrink wrap and a protective steel frame. Over the past couple of days, the Super Guppy has been making a journey from its home at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, over to California, and then up to Seattle at a top speed of around 200 knots. It wasn't exactly a record-setting pace — but what the Super Guppy lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in the "What the Heck Is That?" department.

The Guppy flew over my hometown and its surroundings with a Seattle-born astronaut, Greg Johnson, at the controls. Then it floated down to a landing right in front of the museum, which is adjacent to Boeing Field. One of the commentators at the museum called it a "beautifully ugly airplane."

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire pointed to the craft with pride as the sky spit down rain. "When we get together in Washington state, we can land the big whale right behind me," she said.

Museum of Flight

NASA's Super Guppy and a chase plane fly above the mostly cloudy skies of Seattle.

Museum of Flight

After its touchdown at Seattle's Boeing Field, the turboprop-powered Super Guppy taxis over to the Museum of Flight next door.

Museum of Flight

The entire front of the Super Guppy swings open to reveal the cargo inside.

Museum of Flight

The 65,000-pound Tunner 60K aircraft cargo loader and transporter rolls toward the Super Guppy.

Museum of Flight

The cargo compartment for the Full Fuselage Trainer, wrapped in protective plastic, has been taken out of the Super Guppy for a short ride on the Tunner transporter to its new home in the Museum of Flight's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.

Several thousand onlookers watched as the Super Guppy's entire front opened up to the side like a four-story-high door. 

"It's really cool that it's actually able to fly," Allison Kirkman, a 10-year-old student at Spirit Ridge Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash., told me as she watched from the tarmac. "It's an amazing plane, and how they built it is cool, too."

The shrink-wrapped shuttle crew compartment was moved out of the wide-yawning Super Guppy onto a 65,000-pound mobile transporter, then rolled over to the museum's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. Over the next couple of months, the shuttle mockup will be assembled in a place of honor, alongside a Russian Soyuz capsule and a prototype lander that was used in Blue Origin's spacecraft development program. Museumgoers like Kirkman will be able to walk through the shuttle mockup's cargo bay — and they might even be able to crawl through the crew compartment, just like the astronauts did.

Kids, prepare to be amazed ... again.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

COOPER CITY, Fla. -- A small plane made an emergency landing on a busy Florida street on Saturday afternoon, officials said.

A 1965 Mooney landed on Sheridan Street near Douglas Road around noon after an engine problem, according to the Pembroke Pines Police Department. The aircraft was making its way to the North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, officials said.

The pilot and the passengers were not injured but the plane's wings were clipped when it ran into some trees, police said.

See photo, read the original report at NBCMiami.com

"It's a good day when an aircraft can land on a roadway anywhere, but especially on Sheridan Street, in the weather and the traffic that was out here and end up with no injuries," said Tom Gallagher, public information officer for Pembroke Pines Fire Rescue.

Authorities said the four-seater aircraft was coming down the eastbound lanes that were clear at the time. Once traffic began moving on the street, though, the pilot moved the plane to the median where it struck some trees, officials said.

"I was shopping at Publix and I saw the plane coming down and thought, whoah, that's freaky," said resident Steve Romney.

The plane was coming from Georgia, according to police. The last-minute landing shut down the eastbound lanes for hours as authorities worked to clear out the plane.

"It could have been catastrophic. The pilot used a lot of skill, he was evaluating the air space and his landing area on his way down," Gallagher said.

The incident remains under investigation.

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An American Airlines flight attendant reportedly was subdued by passengers this morning after publicly ranting over the PA system that there was a mechanical problem aboard the plane and that it was going to crash.

The incident occurred as Flight 2332, which was scheduled to depart at 8:25 a.m. CST, was preparing to take off from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport bound for Chicago O'Hare.

Bethany Christakos of Dallas, seated toward the rear of the plane, said passengers started "freaking out" as one of the female flight attendants gave a rambling, 15-minute speech on the plane's public-address system.

"She said, 'I'm not responsible for this plane crashing,'" Christakos told the Associated Press.

Several passengers who claimed to be aboard the flight posted updates to Twitter.

“American airlines flight attendent talking about how the flight is going to crash, making 4 kids sitting around me start crying...,” wrote Sean Gabbert (@stp33), who also tweeted a photo.

"We had a crazy flight attendant who was telling us we would crash and die and got into a fight ad (sic) had to be held down by 5 guys,” Skyler Finley (@FinleySkyler) wrote.

Airport spokesman David Magaña said that public safety officers responded to the incident: “Two females were transported to hospitals, one to Parkland (Dallas) and one to Baylor Grapevine. No state criminal charges are being considered at this time.”

Passenger Hannah Abney told NBC News that the flight attendant ranted about the airline's bankruptcy. She described the passengers as calm yet concerned, but she chose to exit the aircraft with her toddler rather than continue on to Chicago. 

American Airlines issued a statement confirming the incident and said that the aircraft returned to the gate and was met by police officers. “Two flight attendants were taken to local hospitals for treatment,” said spokesman Ed Martelle. “We continue to investigate the details and circumstances and will have no further comment at this time.”

American Airlines and parent AMR Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection Nov. 29 and are seeking to cut $2 billion in annual costs, including $1.25 billion from labor through moves such as slashing 13,000 jobs. Labor unions at American Airlines are seeking binding arbitration to settle negotiations over the company's cost-cutting plans.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents American Airlines flight attendants, issued this statement following this morning's incident.

"There was an unfortunate but non-violent confrontation involving a flight attendant aboard an aircraft preparing for takeoff this morning at DFW. Passenger accounts have been reported in the media but details remain sketchy. The incident is being investigated by the proper authorities with the full cooperation of APFA. APFA representatives have been in contact with the crew, the company, and the authorities and are providing assistance as needed."

Heather Poole, a flight attendant and author of the newly released "Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet," told msnbc.com that "flying can be stressful."

"And much like any other job, there are stresses that might cause a person to break...This type of thing is not unique to flight attendants," she said. "It happens to [others] but when it does they're usually surrounded by family and coworkers who have a better understanding of what might be going on."

Friday’s incident shares some similarities with former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater’s infamous meltdown in 2010, in which he deployed an emergency chute on a grounded plane after an altercation with a passenger. 

Martelle said American Airlines "will ensure that the affected flight attendants receive proper care, and we commend our other crew members for their assistance in quickly getting the aircraft back to the gate so that customers could be re-accommodated. Our customers were not in danger at any time."  

The cabin crew was replaced and the flight departed for Chicago at 9:46 a.m. The flight arrived at Chicago around noon CST.

Information from NBC News and the Associated Press was included in this report. Find more by Harriet Baskas on Stuck at The Airport.com and follow her on Twitter. 

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