U.S.

Tapes Of Doomed Flight 587 Released

By Tricia McDermott

February 26, 2002 / 4:49 PM EST / CBS

Doomed American Airlines Flight 587 took off without problems, though pilots were warned of turbulence from the plane that preceded it in the air, newly released audio tapes showed.

Tapes of conversations between air traffic controllers and the crew of the Airbus A300-600 showed no problems until a voice was heard saying that the plane was descending, reports CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr.

The Airbus A300-600 crashed Nov. 12 shortly after taking off. All 260 people on board and five on the ground were killed.

The tapes, released Wednesday by the Federal Aviation Administration, do not indicate whether the voice was that of a controller or a member of the flight crew. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

"Tower look to the south, there's an aircraft crashing," came the message, at 9:16:13 a.m. EST, shortly after the plane took off from Kennedy Airport in New York.

Thirty-six seconds later, a controller called Flight 587 and told the pilots the tower was not receiving signals from the plane's transponder, an automatic beacon that allows the plane to be tracked. In the next two minutes the controller tried three more times to raise the pilots but got no answer.

At 9:18 a.m. the pilots of another American plane, Flight 686, reported they saw black smoke.

"It’s a huge fire, a tremendous amount of black smoke," they told the tower.

The plane's tail fin and engines fell off before the crash. Crash investigators are now almost certain rapid back-and-forth movements of the jet's rudder exposed the plane to forces strong enough to snap off the tail.

Investigators say either a mechanical failure whipsawed the rudder wildly out of control or the pilots flew the plane too aggressively. The rudder swung back and forth, the tail broke loose, and the jetliner shuddered side to side — causing the engines to separate.

There is still no evidence that any pre-existing tail damage contributed to crash of flight 587. So, pilots are being warned to avoid overusing their rudders until investigators can explain exactly what went wrong.