Black-box tape gives clue to crash mystery

By SCOTT MacLEOD and AGENCIES

The New York airliner crash is growing more baffling as investigators reject a string of popular theories about the cause.

United States officials said yesterday that the death-plunge of an American Airlines Airbus A300 into a residential street in the borough of Queens on Tuesday was unlikely to have been caused by terrorism, a bird strike or a faulty engine.

But some clues emerged from a black-box tape recorder, which revealed that Flight 587's pilots knew it was in trouble after taking off from John F. Kennedy Airport.

The tape, which runs two minutes and 24 seconds, from the start of the Airbus' takeoff run until the crash, shows that after one minute and 47 seconds a loud rattle was heard, followed by another 14 seconds later.

Between the rattles the captain said he thought he was hitting the wake of another aircraft, now thought to be a Japan Airlines jumbo jet.

In the 23 seconds after the second rattle the co-pilot asked for maximum power and both pilots made "several comments suggesting loss of control", said George Black of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Mr Black said the noises would have to be matched with radar and other data to work out what they meant. Only the pilots' voices could be heard, which suggested there was no hijacking. "Sounds are important - all sorts of clunks and clinks can be identified," he said.

Investigators said they were looking at whether turbulence from the Japan Airlines jet played a role in the crash, although the aircraft are believed to have been at least two minutes apart - the legal requirement.

The Washington Post cited unnamed sources as saying sabotage and maintenance errors were yet to be ruled out.

It said investigators and Airbus engineers were puzzled that both engines and the aircraft's vertical tailfin cracked off. Losing a tailfin would throw the jet out of control and could produce forces that would make the engines fall off.

Witnesses saw the Airbus' left engine fall before the crash, which sparked early theories that one of its spinning blades came loose and shattered part of the aircraft. There were also suggestions that birds were sucked into the General Electric engine, causing it to fail.

But investigators found no evidence of such damage, Mr Black said.

All 260 people on the twin-engined jet were killed and at least five on the ground died in the crash in the Rockaway area.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said body parts would be identified by DNA tests.

The crash initially sparked fears of another terrorist attack. City authorities ordered a security crackdown, closing airports, bridges and tunnels as jet fighters roared overhead.

But most investigators and officials said yesterday that the Airbus, which was flying to the Dominican Republic, was probably destroyed by some sort of accident.

Mr Giuliani said he was relieved that terrorism seemed unlikely, and praised people in Queens for their strength in dealing with the double blow of losing residents in the crash and the World Trade Center terror attack.

"They're the strongest people you're ever going to meet because of their strong religious faith," he said of the mostly working-class Christians in Rockaway.

Investigators picking through the carnage found the Airbus' second black box, which recorded the aircraft's height, speed and other data.

Safety Board head Marion Blakey called it a "major breakthrough" that could help solve the mystery of the crash.

The aftermath took a Macabre twist when the organisers of a US lottery revealed they would have to pay more than $2.5 million to thousands of people who used the crashed airliner's flight details as lucky numbers - and won. Within a day of Flight 587's crash, the number 587 popped out as the winner for a New Jersey Lottery game called Pick-3.

Nearly 28,000 people each won $40, and thousands more won smaller prizes for choosing other combinations of the flight number.

The executive director of New Jersey Lottery, Virginia Haines, said numbers linked to disasters were ready fodder for lottery players.

"It's sad to say. I don't understand all of their thinking, but numbers like this mean something to people who play," she said.

"They're not taking away from how they feel about this tragedy - it's just numbers."

No New Zealanders have been reported killed in the crash.

However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it had received only 169 names of victims by yesterday.