Flight 587 Pilots Lost Control of Plane in Less Than 2 Minutes

N E W   Y O R K, Nov. 13, 2001 -- A "rattling" noise was heard in the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 587 seconds before pilots lost control of the plane, crash investigators said today.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators, releasing a preliminary timeline of doomed American Airlines Flight 587 this evening, said they are making significant progress in Monday morning's crash, which killed at least 262 people.

The airliner went down less than three minutes after takeoff, breaking up over a peninsula that stretches between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, at the southern edge of Queens, N.Y. The plane had 260 passengers and crew members and none are believed to have survived. Five people on the ground are missing and feared dead.

Preliminary analysis of the cockpit voice recording of Flight 587 found that the first sign of trouble came less than two minutes after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, investigators said today.

NTSB investigator George Black said a rattling sound is heard on the tape coming from the aircraft 107 seconds after the jet's engines powered up, presumably for takeoff. Seven seconds later, the plane encountered wake from another jet, and another seven seconds later, a second more audible rattling sound was heard. At the 127 second mark, Black said, there were "several comments" about losing control of the aircraft.

Less than 20 seconds later, the cockpit recording ends. In all, the recording — from takeoff to the end— lasts 2 minutes and 24 seconds.

Investigators said they have identified all the major structures of the aircraft. Black said the NTSB would be running sophisticated analyses of the tape, including comparing background sounds to an extensive library of sounds that might help identify stray, but perhaps telling noises.

Black said witnesses so far have given similar accounts of the crash.

"They saw the aircraft wobble, they saw pieces come from it andthat it went into a steep, spiraling dive into the ground," Blacksaid.

Second Black Box Found

Investigators hope they will find more clues on whether Flight 587's crash was an accident or an act of terrorism in the plane's flight data recorder. The recorder normally contains vital information such as engine parameters, engine power and control surfaces of the airplane before it went down, will give them a better understanding of what happened.

The second "black box" containing the flight data recorder was found today among the rubble on land, not with the parts of the Airbus A-300 that fell into New York's Jamaica Bay before the body and engines crashed into a residential section of the borough of Queens.

But investigators said tonight the recorder was damaged and they were unable to obtain the data. Officials said the data is there, but they will take the recorder to a company in Sarasota, Fla. to get the information extracted.

Federal Aviation Administration officials say investigations are pointing to some sort of accident, but just what kind remains unclear.

No Reason to Suspect Terrorism, Feds Say

"Everything points to an accident," said Marion Blakey, chairwoman of the NTSB. "The communications from the cockpit were normal up until the last few seconds before the crash."

Officials said they had no reason to believe the incident was the result of a terrorist act, although FBI investigators are participating in the probe.

The first of the two "black boxes" added to investigators' feeling that mechanical or human error caused the crash. There were no voices other than the pilots' on the tape, and no sounds that would indicate anything other than an accident, Black said today on Good Morning America.

The plane left John F. Kennedy International Airport at 9:14 a.m. and crashed about five miles away. Flight 587 was headed for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and at least 175 Dominicans were on board the plane.

In addition to the tape, investigators have been studying the trail of debris the plane left as it crossed Jamaica Bay from the airport and crashed into the residential community. Black said three-dimensional mapping would help investigators understand how the plane broke apart.

The jet's vertical stabilizer from the tail was found in the bay, nearly intact. One of the plane's engines — or at least a part of it — landed at a gas station a few blocks away from where the main part of the fuselage came down. The second engine fell nearby in a separate location, the mayor said.

"It does indicate that something was going on very shortly after the airplane took off and was making its turn on its normal departure, but we really won't know the significance of those pieces until we get a chance to look at the data recording and the radar information and other things that we will be looking at intensively today," Black said.

Eyewitnesses gave conflicting accounts of the plane's final moments. Most reported seeing the plane on fire and breaking apart, while a few said they saw an explosion before jet debris began falling and spreading over a wide area.

Witnesses described a crisp, clear autumn morning interrupted by the unnatural sound of a plane in distress. Already, New York City residents were wary of low-flying and unusual-sounding planes after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, where more than 4,300 people died after two hijacked passenger jets slammed into the twin towers.

An American Airlines jet was one of those that crashed into the World Trade Centers. Another American Airlines plane crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

Focus on Engine Problem

The engine involved in the crash, the CF6-80C2 made by General Electric, has had a series of problems. The FAA has ordered increased inspections of the engines.

A series of at least three CF6-80C2 engine failures in 2000 led the NTSB to recommend that the FAA step up inspections of the GE engine. The board said an apparent disintegration problem in the engines could cause a "catastrophic accident" if not addressed.

A spokesman for GE told ABCNEWS.com this problem, which involved the "rubbing" of rotating parts against static parts inside the engine, had been fixed.

"That problem has since been corrected," he said.

American Airlines said the jet that crashed had a minor maintenance check on Sunday, and it was scheduled for a major check in July 2002. The plane's right engine, which witnesses said they saw fall off the plane, was almost ready for its major overhaul.

"The number 2 engine, which is the right engine, had 9,788 hours since its last overhaul, and an engine will typically have a major overhaul every 10,000 hours," said Al Becker, American Airlines spokesman. The jet's left engine had a major overhaul 694 flight hours ago.

Aviation sources told ABCNEWS that Flight 587 reached only 2,800 feet before falling off radar. Possibly supporting the mechanical failure theory, a pilot of another jet saw smoke coming off Flight 587's engine as the jet took off, sources said, as did a passenger on another plane.

Based on the sketchy details emerging from the crash site, ABCNEWS aviation consultant John Nance said two explanations are possible for the jet's downing. There could have been a loss of control of the aircraft due to an internal explosion for mechanical reasons, or there could have been an explosion of an incendiary device inside the plane.

The way the plane broke up, though, is puzzling, because it seems there must have been more than one explosion to cause both engines to fall off and the vertical stabilizer to break off.

"There are a tremendous number of problems in trying to construct a scenario in why we found engines in different places, the fuselage in another place and an almost pristine vertical fin in the water," Nance said on Good Morning America.

Considering Bird Malfunction

Investigators are also considering the possibility that one of the airplane's engines collided with and ingested a large bird or flock of birds, leading to malfunctions.

Airplane collisions with birds have caused crashes in the past, including a commercial flight at Boston Logan airport in 1960 that collided with a flock of starlings and crashed, killing 67 people on board. New York's John F. Kennedy airport is bordered by a protected marshland habitat that local biologists have described as a "bird heaven."

Black said investigators had not found any evidence suggesting a bird collision.

"There was no evidence upon preliminary investigation of any sort of foreign objects in the engines," Black said. "There's a story that indicates that someone saw evidence and if they did, they took it with them, 'cause it's not there now."

However, Black said, investigators are not ruling anything out at this point.