Posted on 11/13/2001 5:09:23 PM PST by l33t
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cockpit voice recorder recovered from American Airlines Flight 587 captured the sound of the plane loudly rattling twice before the pilots lost control after take-off, investigators said on Tuesday as they sought the cause of the crash that killed up to 265 people.
Evidence from the plane, the voice recorder recovered along with the flight data recorder, and the crash site near John F. Kennedy International Airport initially yielded no signs of internal engine failure or a criminal act, said officials with the National Transportation Safety Board.
But, said NTSB investigator George Black at a late afternoon news conference, "We're not ruling anything out at this point."
The plane, bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, took off at 9:14 a.m. Monday. It split apart and crashed nose first about two minutes later, setting fire to a dozen homes in the working-class seaside neighborhood of Rockaway in Queens.
The inferno killed 251 passengers, nine crew members and at least five people on the ground. Four more people on the ground were reported missing.
Listening to the cockpit voice recorder, the rattling of the frame of the Airbus A300-600 can be heard 107 seconds after the pilots powered up the engines and again 14 seconds later, Black said.
The timing still must be matched up with the flight data recorder and with radar, investigators said.
Midway between the two rattling sounds, the captain can be heard remarking that he was encountering the wake of a plane ahead of him, he said.
That plane was a JAL 747, Black said.
TURBULENCE
All aircraft produce wake turbulence -- spirals of air that trail from the wingtips that can be a particular hazard when smaller aircraft follow a larger plane.
There have been some instances where wake turbulence causes structural damage, according to a Federal Aviation Administration brochure for pilots.
The FAA requires that these types of aircraft must be four miles apart. Aviation sources said they believe these plane were further apart, and the NTSB did not reveal the distance between the two.
After the second rattling, the co-pilot can be heard asking for maximum power, Black said.
Then there are "several comments suggesting a loss of control" of the plane.
Just 20 seconds passed between the sound of the first rattle and the pilots' loss of control. The tape ended 17 seconds later, only 144 seconds after the engines are first heard.
Asked how loud the rattling was, Black said, "It was significant enough for them to make note of it."
"Sounds are important," he said. "All sorts of clunks and clinks can be identified."
The voice recorder tape is 30 minutes and 38 seconds long and of good quality, he said.
The plane's engines appeared to be in one piece, Black noted.
"Initial inspection shows no evidence of any sort of internal failure of engines," he said.
NTSB investigators have been looking very closely at the plane's two General Electric CF680C2 series engines.
Most of the 251 passengers were Dominican citizens or Dominican-Americans, many headed home for the start of the holiday season.
TWO COMMUNITIES IN GRIEF
"We have two very beautiful communities in New York City that don't deserve this kind of grief," said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, describing the largely Dominican-immigrant Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights where many passengers lived and the Rockaway area where the plane hit.
The Queens neighborhood was home to several firefighters who were killed in the Sept. 11 airliner hijack attack that destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers.
Police said 265 bodies had been found, believed to be those of the 260 passengers and crew and five people on the ground.
"We have recovered almost all the remains now, and the process of identification is beginning," said NTSB Chairwoman Marion Blakey. "That also means we can proceed more rapidly at the crash site."
Word of the crash prompted initial fears that New York City, still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks, was again under assault.
But NTSB officials said there was no evidence of sabotage and only the voices of the pilot and co-pilot are heard on the recorder.
On Sept. 11, hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and a fourth in a field in Pennsylvania. They killed more than 4,500 people. Pieces of the American Airlines plane were pulled out of the water in nearby Jamaica Bay and two engines separated from the fuselage indicated it broke up soon after takeoff, Black said.
Investigators made 15 dives into Jamaica Bay and did not see any more debris, the NTSB said.
Black also said there was no evidence that the crash was caused by birds being sucked into the plane's engines.
Residents said they were finding debris in their backyards and streets.
"We're finding nuts and bolts everywhere, pieces of airplane," said school crossing guard Carl Farris. "When it fell, it vibrated and made a sound like 'whoo.' Now everyone's walking around looking at all these sheared-off bolts in their yards and their porches."
When are these NTSB people going to be honest about this?
My sincere condolences to those who lost loved ones in this terrible incident.
A whole lot of theories went down tonight with the engines intact an all.....
Probably they were so panicked they could not be coherent. Lots of unsaved people think that if they are in a similar situation, they can just cry out to Jesus and be saved then. Doesn't work out that way--Jesus or anything rational is not what on your mind--NOTHING is on your mind except pure animal horror
Yeah, probably some Arab or something up there with a sawsall. Maybe a Bob Villa type...
I had the same exact thought.
Just think where we would be if only one plane hit the WTC and nobody was allowed to use their cell phones...
It's always a spark in a faulty center fuel tank.
I know. I still remember that after the 2nd plane hit that the news idiots thought that was an accident too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.