For Flight 587, Seconds Between Life and Death
By Don Phillips and Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A01
NEW YORK, Nov. 13 -- The pilots and crew of American Airlines Flight 587 lost any chance of survival within seconds Monday as the plane shuddered and rattled, possibly hit the wake of another plane flying ahead, lost both engines and its tail fin and went into a spiraling dive, according to information released today by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Briefings and interviews throughout the day indicated that the board has assembled an unusual amount of information for this early in an investigation: Both the voice and data recorders have been recovered. Numerous witnesses -- including two flight crews -- tell a remarkably similar story. All significant parts of the plane have been found and given a preliminary check. A construction worker even videotaped the plane's untroubled takeoff -- although, unfortunately, not the crash.
Yet the tragedy that took at least 262 lives remained a mystery. Indeed, each new piece of evidence seemed to eliminate another likely scenario. Investigators said a preliminary reading of the plane's cockpit voice recorder offers no evidence that terrorists downed the plane. But at the same time, they said, nothing on the tape would rule out sabotage.
There are no bomb sounds on the voice recorder, nor is there visual evidence -- which is easily detected -- of bomb damage on the wreckage. But investigators said more subtle forms of sabotage must be considered, along with possible maintenance mistakes or such issues as the use of inferior bolts and other fasteners.
Investigators and the manufacturer of the A300 wide-body airplane, Airbus Industrie of Toulouse, France, said they remained puzzled that both engines and the airplane's vertical tail fin cracked off for no apparent reason. In particular, several investigators spoke of being baffled that the vertical tail fin may have broken off first.
That loss is significant, as such a catastrophic event would have tossed the plane out of control, and might have set in motion severe forces that snapped off both engines. The engines landed a block apart -- one in a gas station and another striking a boat in a neighborhood driveway. The main body of the plane crashed two blocks to the west.
As investigators pored over recordings and wreckage, New York City dealt with yet another disaster. Air traffic returned to normal at the city's three airports, and bridges and tunnels were open, after having been closed for several hours Monday.
Relatives and friends took up the grim business of identifying the dead. Many of the victims came from New York's burgeoning Dominican immigrant community. Many of those on the plane were mothers and fathers and children -- including at least five children small enough to ride on their parents' laps -- en route to see relatives in the Dominican Republic.
The grieving families came to a hangar at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center by shuttle bus, by taxi and on foot. They carried toothbrushes, locks of hair, anything that might help identify loved ones.
Marino and Angela de la Cruz, father and daughter, are among the dead. Their daughter and sister, Yvellise de la Cruz, 40, came to the center. "I don't know what to say," Yvellise de la Cruz said through tears, consoled by her brother-in-law. "My father didn't speak English. . . . And my sister, I talked to her every day, two times a day. My sister . . . was like a mother to all of us."
But as city and state officials tended to the victims and the setting up of relief funds, investigators with the NTSB and the FBI puzzled over wreckage that was strewn over several miles.
One piece of evidence raises the likelihood that the crew thought the right engine had lost power: The rudder trim setting was found in the crash at a hefty 10 degrees to the left, indicating the crew was using the long, flat, movable panel at the end of the vertical tail fin to compensate.
Yet the left engine appears to have torn off first. And some investigators are beginning to suspect that the vertical tail fin and rudder -- found back along the flight path in Jamaica Bay -- actually left the plane before the engines did.
Investigators found that the fin's attachment points were intact, and that the failure seemed to lie at the base of the fin, which is made up of composite materials. Manufacturers have described the composites as stronger than metal, and the failure raises the possibility that the composites have been overrated.
Composites are used widely in both commercial and military aircraft because they are light and quite strong.
The investigation of plane accidents follows a Sherlock Holmes-like process: Eliminate possible causes until only one is left. No matter how implausible, that's the answer. And this investigation is no different.
On Monday, many speculated that engine failure had downed the plane. But investigators have found no evidence of catastrophic failure in the big General Electric Co. engines, NTSB board member George Black said.
Nor, Black said, was there any evidence that the engines had sucked in birds -- a theory that was widely repeated early today -- perhaps causing them to stall.
Investigators today found the second of the plane's two onboard recorders, the flight data recorder, which measures airplane movements and control positions. Today, however, Black read a cursory and cryptic summary of the cockpit voice recorder, which investigators found Monday.
He briefly talked reporters through the takeoff and death throes of Flight 587, using the cockpit tape as a guide:
The plane takes off to the northwest, flying out over Queens and then banking south over Jamaica Bay. Less than two minutes after takeoff, the sound of a rattling airframe is heard. Seven seconds later, a crew member mentions a "wake encounter."
This presumably referred to turbulence flowing from the wingtips of the plane that took off ahead of Flight 587. These long spinning strings of turbulence can last in the air for several minutes -- but they are almost never enough to bring a plane down.
Black said a Japan Airlines 747 was flying several miles ahead of Flight 587, well beyond the minimum separation of four miles for planes taking off. This distance is specifically intended to mitigate any ill effect of a wake.
At 121 seconds after takeoff, a second airframe rattle is heard. Four seconds later, the co-pilot calls for maximum power. Two seconds later, a member of the crew suggests the plane is out of control.
And 15 seconds after that, the recording ends -- presumably when the plane lost electrical power and plowed into Belle Harbor.
Though many questions remain, not least if the crash was accident or sabotage or the result of poor maintenance, board Chairman Marion C. Blakey appeared buoyed by the quantity of information gleaned thus far by her investigators.
"I'm very pleased to say that we're making real progress with the investigation," she said.
In Manhattan, however, public officials spoke little of the particulars of the investigation, other than to caution that much is not known. And, once more, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani found himself uttering all too familiar words of grief and comfort -- this time for two working-class communities that lost so much in the crash of Flight 587.
"How do you respond when a father says he's lost his 4-year-old boy?" Giuliani said at the Javits Center. "We have two beautiful communities in New York who don't deserve this kind of grief."
Staff writer Ben White contributed to this report.
*************************
Best Regards, J.T. |
