Cockpit tape showed ‘no pilot concern’ before crash

Press, 5 August 1985, Page 6

Cockpit tape showed ‘no pilot concern’ before crash

NZPA-Reuter Dallas Recovered tape recordings have yielded no evidence so far that a violent thunderstorm caused the Delta Air Lines crash that killed 131 persons at DallasFort Worth airport, said United States air safety investigators yesterday. A National Transportation Safety Board member, Mr Patrick Bursley, said that flight 191’s cockpit voice recorder, which was recovered with the flight data recorder, showed no pilot concern about the flight’s progress and no evidence that the control tower had reported a wind-shear alert

An Australian, K. O’Reilly, of Brisbane, was one of two foreign passengers aboard the airliner. The other was a Saudi Arabian businessman, according to a passenger list

released by Delta. Three flight attendants and 28 passengers survived the crash of a three-engine, Lockheed Tri Star en route from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It had 162 people aboard as it approached Dallas-Fort Worth airport during a thunderstorm.

Witnesses and survivors said they believed the aircraft might have been struck by lightning or caught in a vertical downdraft of wind called a wind shear.

“Wind shear is a possibility,” Mr Bursley said. Later he said the highest wind speed recorded before the crash was about 34km/b. Investigators had not confirmed reports of lightning striking the plane, he added.

Flight 191 vzas making its final approach when it went down near the airport’s northern boundary and ex-

ploded. The plane bounced across the highway and a field, clipped one or two water tanks and skidded across tarmac, witnesses said. A man in a car hit by the plane was decapitated, witnesses said.

Officials late yesterday increased the death toll by one after finding an infant’s body. The baby, who was not identified, was carried aboard the TriStar and did not occupy a separate seat, so the child was not on previous passenger lists, Delta spokesman Matt Guilfoyle said. Mr Bursley said the airport’s low-level wind shear alert system — in which a computer analyses data from five sensors around the periphery and one in the centre of the field — was functioning at the time of the accident. He said the system gives “a very localised reading” of any

intense divergence of winds, and the nearest sensor to the impact site was about 2km away. Mr Bursley said the airport’s air traffic control tower gave no “go-around” order to the pilot to avoid bad weather conditions. No sign had been found of equipment failure, and the pilot was “within a very few degrees of his planned course,” he said. The investigators are expected to spend two more days documenting the distribution of the wreckage. The flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder were flown to Washington for further examination by air safety experts. A passenger, Jay Slusher, aged 38, a computer programmer, of Phoenix, Arizona, who received minor injuries, said the plane had been in a delay pattern for about 30 minutes because of

bad weather. “The ride got rougher and rougher to the point where it was hard to hang on to the seat,” Mr Slusher said. “Just before the crash, the plane was rocking back and forth.” Mr Slusher said the aircraft snapped in half and erupted in flames. He escaped by jumping out of the wreckage. Relatives carrying dental charts, photographs and other clues to the identities of loved ones helped officials sorting the remains of 129 people. Most survivors had been seated in the back of the wide-bodied, Lockheed L--1011. “I’m amazed anyone survived,” said Dr James Atkins, an emergency room physician at Parkland Memorial Hospital and among the first doctors on the scene.