No one else was on board the 50-seat jet. The plane crashed into backyards, but no one on the ground was hurt.

The pilots took off in Little Rock, Ark., en route to Minneapolis. After engines failed, they were supposed to make an emergency landing at the Jefferson City Memorial Airport. Tey didn't make it, and the plane ended up in pieces off Highway 50 East near Expressview Drive.

One resident who lives in the neighborhood was just arriving home when the plane came crashing down.

"It sounded like a bomb. The house started going up and down, and when I looked at the windows, it was pure white and you couldn't see anything else," resident Jack Horn said. "I went outside and I saw the fire."

At 9:53 p.m. that night, the plane's cockpit voice recorder captured the captain telling an air traffic controller, "We don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun and come on up here."

The pilots had flown the plane to 41,000 feet, nearly eight miles above the ground - the highest the plane is designed to fly. But it didn't stay there long. About 15 seconds after that initial recording, the captain told the first officer, "We're losing here. We're gonna be coming down in a second here."

The plane's engines couldn't get enough oxygen at that altitude to keep burning fuel. The engines failed, and the plane crashed at 10:15 p.m.

"It (was) very surreal. You see these things on television in other areas that perhaps have more air traffic," Jefferson City Police Capt. Doug Shoemaker said.

"I was just looking at the fire," Horn said. "I don't know what was really going on."

It was even a shock for residents who were out of town that night.

"When I got to a place where I could (turn) on the television again (in Cape Girardeau), low and behold, there's my backyard on the news," Jefferson City resident Tracey Wetzel said.

Back home, there was extensive damage on the ground.

"The plane came down and clipped a chain link a couple of houses over," Wetzel said. "By the time it got to (my house), it started hitting trees."

Horn found one of the wings in his backyard the next day. Other wreckage lay scattered across the neighborhood.

"I found some in my bushes, found some in the treeline. Found some that ended up across the street," Wetzel said.

After the crash, life for residents remained upside down for a week as the cleanup and investigation continued.

"The rest of the people in the neighborhood actually did stay at one of the hotels in town," Wetzel said. "It was very odd just to be able to come back. You could grab a few things, but you couldn't stay here very long."

The residents agreed that, while it was a serious accident, it could have been a lot worse.

"It was a miracle, a true miracle they brought that plane down where they did," Wetzel said. "It could have taken out whole homes, and it didn't. That you do have to give them credit for."

"It was nothing short of miraculous," Capt. Shoemaker said. "A pretty developed housing area such as that, for the plane not to strike any homes or injure anybody with the exception of the two (pilots), was certainly a shock to us."

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the cause of the accident was the pilots' unprofessional behavior.