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."
I don't understand anything about this stuff. What does a stabilizer intact have to do with proof of tampering? This former NTSB was saying it was important that the stabilizer was intact and that was suspicious to him. What does that mean? Any help ?
When are these NTSB people going to be honest about this?
would you feel better if you got to hear the pilots screaming as the ground came up at them? Anybody know how much of the transcript/audio from these sort of thing is usually released? Something like "OH GOD OH GOD OH PLEASE NONONO" Bet that would be neato keen to listen to.
I seem to remember some rag like the enquirer going to court to get the audio/transcripts from the Challenger disaster released- NASA turned them down out of consideration forthe families feelings.
That may or may not be a good reason, but I'll go with that ahead of unsupported allegations...
Again, nobody on this board, including me and you, knows what borght the plane down. But paraphrasing the tape isn't much evidence one way or the other, except insofar as it suggests nobody came motoring into the cockpit, screaming "death to america"
When planes just start "rattling" and falling apart for what the idiots at NTSB seem to be suggesting is no reason or "nothing to worry about," especially in the heightened awareness following the terrorist attacks everyone is paying extra care, something really is not right. Not right at all.
I agree with you. Here we are a nation that is being particularly cautious and then this happens and all of a sudden, right away the media and officials are ruling out criminal activity/terrorism. It's strange.
I recall on the voice tape in the PSA crash in San Diego in 1978 the last words of in the cockpit were: "This is it. Brace yourselves." and "I love you, Mom."
On the Radio they called the tower and said they were going down. Tower responded that they'd call the equipment. And the pilot radioed "Roger". The last communication even though obviously stressful continued to follow procedures.
Remember this next time you fly. These guys are professionals and they'll do their job to the end.
I'll hazard a guess. The tail section is probably too big to have been sheared off by flying debris. Ergo, unless there was an explosion, it would have to have been torn off by aerodynamic forces as the plane spiraled out of control. But, in that case, the first thing to go would have been the stabilizer, as it has the largest surface to volume ratio of the tail section, and the most fragile structure. Since the stabilizer survived, the tail did not come off due to aerodynamic forces, but due to an explosion.
Sound reasonable?
The investigation of TWA 800 was unlawfully taken away from the National Transportation Safety Board and given to the FBI which immediately began stonewalling all the credible eyewitnesses and evidence.
The government runs around and seizes FAA radar tapes and orders government employees and the military to say nothing about what they saw or heard. I think what is gone now is the trust of the public in the process of investigating these crashes. A number of people I have talked to said if American 587 is a terrorist-caused crash, the government will never admit to it. I agree with that.
The only response to all of this is for the public to stop flying until the government returns truthful disclosure to these investigations. If the average citizen can't be told why planes have crashed, why should anyone get on one?
Sound reasonable?
No. It was intact (minus the rudder) but broke off cleanly, and not scarred, suggesting it was aerodynamic stress, shearing the bolts. It wasn't struck by anything (at least on the right hand side, which is the side we saw in the pictures yesterday).
Tonight the handsome Brian Williams has a shrink as a guest! And this shrink is psychoelaminating why all of a sudden Americans don't want to fly!
Guy's going on and on about post-shock, blah,blah,blah.
Hey, look, way I figger....Bush is just going to have to get the army to force us on those planes at gunpoint.
Because it ain't mental illness to avoid anything that would lead us to disaster and death. Hell no! This is SANITY and airline stock be damned.
I truly believe this will all pass. Someday, in the not too far future I hope, it will be just a bad memory. THEN Americans will get on planes again.
Until then so far as this citizen is concerned the federal government is going to have to oversee those airports and should have been doing this before. And for sure they're going to have to do something about planes falling apart in mid-air.
All this hand wringing asking us to "fly and buy" ain't cutting anymore. And hey, it's perfectly ooooookaaaay to just hunker down for awhile.
They can lead us horses to water but STILL can't make us drink.
It was almost bizarre yesterday when they seemed so eager to reassure people that it's very safe to fly because the plane crash wasn't from terrorists but because all the planes are so old and poorly maintained, and also the ground crews can't detect problems that will cause a plane to fall apart 3 minutes into take-off. As if that would help us run out and buy plane tickets.
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