Print

Mail

wiki links

Voice recorder suggests accident

Relatives arrive for a service for families of the victims. PHOTO: REUTERS

US investigators said yesterday that initial information from the cockpit voice recorder retrieved from the wreckage of an American Airlines plane indicated that Monday's crash was an accident.

"The cockpit voice recorder is the biggest information that we have and a quick listen to that last evening in Washington showed nothing that would imply any sort of unusual activity in the cockpit other than the accident sequence," said the National Transportation Safety Board's George Black.

Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America show, Black said there were no unknown voices in the cockpit before the plane crashed, just minutes after taking off from John F. Kennedy Airport en route to the Dominican Republic.

"There was nothing on the tape that would lead us to believe that it was anything other than an aviation accident," he said, squashing speculation that hijackers might have been on board in a repeat of the Sept. 11 aerial attacks on America.

Up to 269 people died in Monday's crash in a residential area in the borough of Queens in New York. Of those killed, 251 were passengers and nine were crew on board the plane while nine people are missing on the ground.

Investigators were treating the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 as an accident. Early evidence pointing to mechanical failure in the Airbus A300 -- a plane whose CF6-80C2 engines have drawn close scrutiny since the spring of last year, when some planes reported engine failures that sent metal fragments flying.

After extensive review, the US Federal Aviation Administration published a safety notice in the Federal Register on Oct. 5 stating there was a "need for mandatory inspections" of the CF6-80C2 engine because "an unsafe condition has been identified." It gave the public 60 days, until Dec. 4, to comment before ordering the more extensive and more frequent inspections.

The CF6-80C2 is used on more than 1,000 aircraft worldwide, including the US presidential jet, Air Force One.

General Electric, the parent company for the engine maker, said it complied with all the government's repair orders and believed the engine was "phenomenally reliable."

GE has built 2,954 of the engines -- first introduced in 1984 -- and they are among the best-selling for wide-bodied aircraft.

The left engine that apparently failed in Monday's crash had been overhauled recently, while the right engine was due for an overhaul soon.

This story has been viewed 1942 times.