An Air France Concorde en route to New York City crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff Tuesday, slamming into a hotel and a restaurant. A total of 113 people were reported killed when the charter flight went down in the first-ever crash of a Concorde.

France's Interior Ministry said four victims died at the hotel, the 72-room Relais Bleus, which witnesses said was in flames after the crash.

The passengers on flight AF 4590, chartered by a German tourist agency, included 96 Germans, two Danes, one Austrian and one American, as well as nine crew members, the airline said. The American was a retired Air France employee, but the company did not release a name.

The Concorde

Capacity: 100 passengers, and 2.5 tonnes of cargo. Seating: The front cabin has 40 seats, and the rear cabin 60 seats, both offering a single-class "R", or supersonic, brand of service. Range: 4,300 miles (6,880 kilometers)

Engines: Four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593s, each producing 38,000 pounds of thrust with reheat. Take-off speed: 220 knots (250 m.p.h. 400 kilometers per hour). Cruising speed: 1,350 m.p.h. (2,150 kilometers per hour/Mach Two), at 60,000 feet (18,181 meters) Landing speed: 187 m.p.h. (300 kilometers per hour)

Length: 203 feet 9 inches (62.1 meters) Wingspan: 83 feet 8 inches (25.5 meters) Height: 37 feet 1 inches (11.3 meters) Fuel capacity: 26,286 Imperial gallons (119,500 litres/95,600 kilograms) source: British Airways

The plane had been chartered by Deilmann, a German tour company, and the passengers were on their way to New York to join a cruise ship. The tour company declined immediate comment.

Air France said the crash appeared to have been caused by a fire in one of the engines at the moment of takeoff, and investigators were trying to determine what started the fire.

As the jet struggled to gain height, witnesses saw a plume of flame trailing some 60 yards (meters) behind the plane. Visual observers say that two engines on the craft's left side were afire and made the plane uncontrollable. At that point, the pilot tried to bring the craft back to Charles de Gaulle airport. Before crashing next to the hotel, the jet flipped as the crew tried to turn it back to a runway.

Early Wednesday, the transportation ministry said the plane's two flight recorders, which were damaged in the crash, had been found. Experts said possible causes of engine problems ranged from birds flying into the air intake to mechanical failure. The plane was powered by Rolls Royce Olympus 593 engines

The crash in the town of Gonesse took place at 4:44 p.m. local time about 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) northeast of Paris. The plane went down soon after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport. It had 12,000 hours of flight time and went through an in-depth evaluation and inspection less than a year ago.

Air France and British Airways have suspended their daily flights until more information is known.

"The aircraft had a technical check a few days ago (July 21)," said Air France Chief Executive Officer Jean-Cyril Spinetta. Preliminary indicators point to an engine problem as the crash's cause, he said.

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Witnesses said the supersonic aircraft was not able to gain sufficient altitude before it crashed, and that police were keeping onlookers away from the site. Some witnesses said the engine was on fire and that a huge cloud of black smoke went up in the air. A mechanic said he saw flames measuring 40 to 60 feet (12 to 18 meters) long coming from one of plane's two left engines soon after it took off.

Frederic Savery, 21, was driving along a highway on the way home when he saw the plane go down near Gonesse.

"I saw the plane, it passed 30 meters (about 100 feet) above us -- the whole back end of the plane was on fire,'' Savery told The Associated Press. "We saw it start to turn, but we didn't hear a noise when it crashed. All of a sudden, everything was black, we stopped right there and called the firefighters.''

Samir Hossein, 15, a student in Gonesse, was playing tennis with friends when they saw the plane go by, its rear motor on fire. ``We saw it lose altitude. It chopped off those trees and headed to the ground. The pilot tried to bank but the plane rolled over and smacked into the hotel nose first and turned over,'' he said.

"We saw flames shoot up 40 meters (120 feet) and there was a huge boom,'' Hossein said.

The plane was full of fuel on takeoff for the Atlantic run.

The crash took place at 4:44 p.m. local time (14:44 GMT), just after takeoff from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

British Airways said Monday said it had found cracks in the wings of some of its supersonic aircraft, but said there was no danger to passengers.

The Concorde, which crosses the Atlantic at 1,350 m.p.h. (2,187 kilometers per hour), has been considered among the world's safest planes. Its only major scare came in 1979, when a bad landing made by one of the SSTs blew out a tire. The incident led to a design modification.

An Air France Concorde Jet

The plane is popular with celebrities, world-class athletes and the rich. It flies above turbulence at nearly 60,000 feet (20,000 meters), crossing the Atlantic in about 3 and a half hours, less than half that of regular jetliners.

The first Concorde plane flew in 1969. Now, 13 of the needle-nosed supersonic jets are operated by Air France and British Airways. A roundtrip Paris-New York ticket costs $9,000, roughly 25 percent more than regular first class. A London-New York roundtrip runs $9,850.

Air France officials have said in the past that their current fleet is fit to fly safely until 2007. But Joe Brancatelli, a columnist for biztravel.com, said the plane is starting to become obsolete and is challenging to repair since the fleet is not being expanded.

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"This crash will get a disproportionately high amount of publicity," he said. "This could scare away the market and that could be the end of commercial [supersonic] aviation for the foreseeable future."

The Air France airliner was bound for John F. Kennedy airport in New York.

Air France and British Airways both said on Monday that they had detected microscopic cracks in the wings of Concorde aircraft but Air France said there was no danger to passengers.

Concorde, an Anglo-French project, entered service in the mid 1970s and is the world's only supersonic passenger aircraft. Of the 13-plane fleet in service, seven with British Airways and six with Air France.

Supersonic jets attracted the attention of NASA, which had planned to build a next-generation supersonic jet that would fly 300 passengers at twice the speed of sound. But the program was killed in 1999 to free up funds for the International Space Station.

British Airways has grounded one of its Concorde supersonic jetliners after small cracks spotted on its wings grew larger, the company said Monday. The crash Tuesday appeared to be unrelated to the micro-cracks, Spinetta said later that day.

Engineers detected 2-inch (5 centimeter) cracks in the rearmost wings of the entire British fleet a few months ago, company spokesman Peter Middleton said. After ultrasonic testing and consultations with aviation authorities, all seven planes were allowed to remain in service, he said.

"It was not a major structural element of the wing,'' Middleton said. "It was declared not safety critical.''

But the crack in one of the planes' wings was found to have grown to 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters) last week, forcing the company to ground it for maintenance repairs. It is expected to return to the skies by September.

Middleton said passengers were never at risk, and that the six aircraft still in use remain completely safe, despite the cracks. The other planes will continue to undergo regular checks, he said.

"Everybody knows that we are so ultra-cautious that we wouldn't be flying it if we had the slightest doubts,'' Middleton said.

The Concordes' wings are manufactured by the French company Aerospatiale, which has been notified about the problem. Concorde, the world's only supersonic passenger service, is an Anglo-French project.

Reuters; The Associated Press and SPACE.com's Washington Bureau Chief Paul Hoversten, Staff Writer Maia Weinstock and Paris correspondent Frederic Castel contributed to this report.