The New York Times, "A Workhorse of the Skies, Perhaps with a Deadly Defect"

          One of an unglamorous fleet, the plane that crashed last Monday morning in Queens was an efficient, anonymous workhorse whose marketers nicknamed the model "The Regional Profit Machine." The ill-fated Airbus A300 was wider than many planes, carried lots of people on the short, packed flights from New York to Miami and the Caribbean, and cost less than other planes to operate.
          Over its 13 years, it logged 37,550 flight hours, making it a middle-aged plane, and accumulated a seemingly unremarkable assortment of entries in computer databases detailing its various aches and ills.
          But now, the plane, known only by its registration number, N14053, will have its biography recorded for all time. The lasting effects of every mile it flew will be assessed, and every routine maintenance job performed on it will be analyzed. But perhaps most significantly, intense scrutiny will be given to one of the very features that was a part of its economic appeal: its use of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics.