CLARENCE, New York: A commuter plane "basically dived" into a house while coming in for a landing, sparking a fiery explosion that killed all 48 people on board and one person on the ground, an emergency official said on Friday.

One Chinese national, Yao Shibin, was among the victims. Yao, born in 1971, was an employee at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Luo Gang, a consul at the Chinese Consulate General in New York.

It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the US in two and a half years.