No work for long time re Oglala Indians, who were holding books hostage
while asking removal of treasurer for theft and fraud......noted Indian
Affairs involved here and still wonder and Indians on scene for lives
lost.
.....am also still wondering about Payne Stewarts plane, JFK Jr's plane,
Flight 990, Flight 800 and of course at least we are spared the TV press
interviews ....oh how I hate those press interviews - this plane and
JFK's plane upside down in water - most of all I wonder why Clinton
would have caused Payne Stewart's plane to be shot down...
Loud noises heard before crash NBC's Hager: Something likely broke
off jet's tail Le Thanh relights a candle Friday at a makeshift
memorial on the beach at Port Hueneme, Calif., for the victims of Alaska
Airlines Flight 261.
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
PORT HUENEME, Calif., Feb. 4 — The cockpit recorder aboard Alaska
Airlines Flight 261 captured a loud noise just before the MD-83 went out
of control and plunged into the ocean, a federal investigator said
Friday. NBC's aviation reporter, Robert Hager, said the startling new
information means the stabilizer or something back in the tail finally
broke apart from the stress of whatever had gone wrong earlier in the
flight.
NBC's Robert Hager reports Friday on the latest on the Alaska Airlines
crash investigation.
THE NOISE was one of two revealed by analysis of the
cockpit voice recorder, said John Hammerschmidt, a member of the
National Transportation Safety Board.
The tape revealed new details of what occurred on the
flight in its last minutes as the pilots struggled to control a problem
with the horizontal stabilizer — the wide part of the tail that keeps
a plane flying level.
According to the recorder, 20 minutes or more after
problems with the stabilizer started, the plane suddenly dropped for
about a minute and a half. Moments later, a bang was heard in the back
of the plane. The flight attendant called the cockpit crew to report it
but the pilots said they'd heard it too.
Then minutes later, yet another bang was heard and about
a minute after that, the plane fell from the sky.
Crash of Flight 261•Latest news
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•Stabilizer scenarios
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Hager said the new information doesn't explain what originally went
wrong but he said it does seem to explain why the plane went down in the
end. He said if the noise hadn't happened, the crew might have been able
to make an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport in
spite of the jet's earlier problems.
Instead, the plane nose-dived into the Pacific Ocean en
route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and Seattle on
Monday, killing all 88 aboard.
FAST-MOVING INVESTIGATION
Click here for more information.
Information from the cockpit voice recorder is adding to
the building evidence of clues as to what happened on the doomed flight.
The key initial steps in the investigation have been
conducted remarkably quickly. Both recorders have been retrieved, and
the mapping of the debris field, expected to take two to three days,
will likely be completed Friday, Hammerschmidt said.
A Navy vessel using side-scan sonar to map debris in the
Santa Barbara Channel about 10 miles from shore appeared to show the
debris in a single concentration within an area the size of a football
field, and the survey was continuing one mile out in each direction, he
said.
Some of the debris has been videotaped by a
remote-operated underwater vehicle — a process sailors call "mowing
the lawn." Most of the debris examined so far were pieces about 5 feet
or 6 feet long, but there was a section of fuselage estimated to be 10
feet long.
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The submersible has sent up video of the tail and a 5-foot section of
the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer, Hammerschmidt said. The
stabilizer is 40 feet long.
After the mapping is done, remote-operated vehicles like
the one that salvaged the plane's "black box" flight recorders will be
sent down to take video images and eventually help retrieve bodies and
wreckage.
"You can't do it overnight," said Navy Capt. Terry
Labrecque. "You have to be methodical."
Compared to other crashes, the investigation into Flight
261 is moving very quickly. By contrast, after the SwissAir plane went
down off Nova Scotia, it was four days before just one of the plane's
two recorders was found. Four days after TWA 800 crashed, investigators
weren't close to finding either recorder: search boats hadn't yet heard
pinging noises. Four days after the EgyptAir plane hit the water, it was
so stormy boats couldn't even get out and couldn't even try to listen
for pingers.
To this day, investigators have not been able to issue
final reports on the causes of any of those crashes.
ANOTHER MEMORIAL PLANNED
As investigators search for answers, relatives of victims
— many of whom worked for or were connected with Alaska Airlines —
were preparing for another private memorial, set for Saturday in the
Pepperdine University chapel overlooking the ocean in Malibu. On Sunday,
the Coast Guard planned to drop flowers from that service over the crash
site.
Fifteen members of various bands of American Indians
gathered on marshland near Point Mugu Friday for a ceremony in honor of
victim Morris Thompson and his family.
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A prominent Athabaskan Indian leader in Alaska and former
commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Thompson, 61, his wife,
Thelma, and daughter Sheryl were killed in the crash.
The Indians burned sage to cleanse their spirits; passed
a pipe, which is a symbol of life; took turns leading tribal chants;
then turned east, west, south and north, some pointing feathers to the
sky, to honor the four directions.
Only four bodies have been recovered. Relatives waited
for word on further efforts to bring back remains.
The wreckage lies in an underwater canyon beneath the
Santa Barbara Channel, where depths range from 90 feet at the edges to
700 feet.
OTHER THEORIES:
While investigators have focused on the stabilizer as the
cause of the crash, aviation experts have weighed in with some
additional theories on what happened:
NTSB sources are reportedly weighing the possibility that the pilots,
during the 30 minutes they struggled to correct the problem, might have
made matters worse by following proper procedures for dealing with a
jammed stabilizer while preparing for an emergency landing.
In theory, the procedural changes in control settings for
an emergency landing might have altered the airflow over the jet's tail
— making the MD-83 too difficult to control or possibly even causing a
sudden aerodynamic stall. The Los Angeles Times cited NTSB sources as
saying the theory is being investigated.
The Times also quoted Bernard Loeb, director of aviation
safety for NTSB, as saying the agency is looking at changing the
procedures for landing a plane in the situation faced by the Alaska
pilots. "That is certainly something we are looking at very carefully,"
he said. "We are going to look at what has been done and what may need
to be different."
As for the source of the jammed stabilizer, an electrical problem is
one strong possibility. The pilots at one point asked the mechanic if
there were any hidden circuit breakers to cut off power to the
stabilizer. That suggests they already had shut off one set of circuit
breakers — a standard remedy for a runaway stabilizer, also known as
runaway trim.
An electrical problem was also what caused the stabilizer
on an American Airlines MD-83 to jam just last Wednesday near Phoenix,
officials report.
A look at black boxes
Commercial planes carry two types of recorders. Each is essential to
investigators trying to piece together the probable cause of a crash.
Click below for specs:
Source: Federal Aviation Administration
This "black box" is required equipment in all commercial aircraft.
Depending on the version, each box continuously records up to 300
essential parameters, such as time, altitude, airspeed, and heading.
Most are equipped with a locator beacon that transmits from up to 14,000
ft. underwater.
Specifications:
Record time: 25 hours continuous
Impact tolerance: 3,400Gs/6.5ms
Fire resistance: 1,100°C up to 30 min.
Water pressure: resistant to 20,000 ft.
Battery life: 30 days
This box is a "cockpit area microphone." Sounds of interest to an
investigator include flight crew voices, engine noise, landing gear, and
other clicks and pops. Unlike 911 tapes, the actual recordings never
become public because Congress considers cockpit verbiage highly
sensitive. The NTSB may, however, release an edited transcript from the
recording at a public hearing.
Specifications:
Record time: 30 min. - 2 hrs.
Impact tolerance: 3,400Gs/6.5ms
Fire resistance: 1,100°C up to 30 min.
Water pressure: resistant to 20,000 ft.
Battery life: 30 days
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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