6 Die as Plane Rams Bus, McDonald’s in Munich

MUNICH, West Germany — A light plane crashed in a busy section of Munich today, setting fire to a McDonald’s restaurant and a crowded city bus. Police said at least six people were killed and 14 were injured.

The plane was headed for Munich Reim airport, about a mile away, when it went down at 3:30 p.m.

Police spokesman Walter Hermann said all three people in the plane, members of a flying club, were killed, as were three people on the ground--a bicyclist and two people in the McDonald’s parking lot.

Events Unclear

Hermann said the twin-engine plane struck the passenger bus and then plowed into the McDonald’s. However, another police spokesman, Guenter Scholz, said the plane’s wing first grazed the restaurant’s arches sign and that debris then struck the bus, setting it afire.

Scholz said 14 people were injured, seven of them critically. Many of the injured were aboard the bus, he said.

Hermann said about 30 people were in the restaurant at the time of the crash, but that all escaped.

The restaurant and bus were destroyed by the flames. Firefighters worked for more than an hour to put out the blaze.

“The landing gear was halfway inside the plane,” one witness said. “As the plane was over the last house before the field it veered to the right and began to wobble a little as if it wanted to make a sharp turn. And then I saw a big fireball.”

“It’s a scene of destruction,” said a Bavarian Radio reporter at the crash site.

Police said the plane went down in Munich’s Trudering district. The area is about a mile from the airport, which is nine miles from the center of Munich.

Karen Zettier, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s in West Germany, said 12 employees were in the restaurant at the time of the accident.

The plane was on a flight from Augsburg, 40 miles northwest of Munich, said one police officer, who added that it “dropped like a stone.”

Charles Rubner, spokesman for McDonald’s Corp. of Oak Brook, Ill., said McDonald’s has 247 restaurants in Germany. In all, McDonald’s has 7,364 restaurants in the United States and 2,190 outside the U.S., Rubner said.