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WORLD> America
Ice eyed as possible cause of fatal plane crash
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-14 21:07

BUFFALO– Investigators pored over instrument data and listened to the last words of the doomed pilot and co-pilot of a commuter plane in the hopes of determining whether ice on its wings caused the fiery crash that took 50 lives.


This image from television shows the tail section of Continental Connection Flight 3407 as it sits amidst still smoking wreckage Friday Feb. 13, 2009 in Clarence Center, N.Y. [Agencies] 

Officials say the crew of Continental Connection Flight 3407 remarked upon significant ice buildup on the wings and windshield shortly before the aircraft pitched violently and slammed into a house.

Ice on the wings can interfere catastrophically with an aircraft's handling and has been blamed for a number of major air disasters over the years, but officials said they had drawn no conclusions as to the cause of Thursday night's crash.

The aircraft, bound to Buffalo from Newark, N.J., went down in light snow and mist - ideal icing conditions - about six miles short of the airport, plunging nose-first through the roof of a house in the suburb of Clarence.

All 44 passengers, four crew members, an off-duty pilot and one person on the ground were killed. Two others escaped from the home, which was engulfed in a fireball that burned for hours, making it too hot to begin removing the bodies until around nightfall Friday.

Investigators pulled the black box recorders from the incinerated wreckage, sent them to Washington and immediately began analyzing the data.

It was the nation's first deadly crash of a commercial airliner in 2 1/2 years.

One of the survivors from the house, Karen Wielinski, 57, told WBEN-AM that she was watching TV in the family room when she heard a noise. She said her daughter, 22-year-old Jill, who also survived, was watching TV in another part of the house.

"Planes do go over our house, but this one just sounded really different, louder, and I thought to myself, `If that's a plane, it's going to hit something,'" she told the station. "The next thing I knew the ceiling was on me."

She said she hadn't been told the fate of her husband, Doug, but added: "He was a good person, loved his family."

Among the passengers killed was a woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11.

Steve Chealander, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said at an afternoon news conference that the crew of the twin-engine turboprop discussed "significant ice buildup" on the windshield and the leading edge of the wings at an altitude of around 11,000 feet as the plane was coming in for a landing.

The flight data recorder indicated the plane's de-icing equipment was in the "on" position, but Chealander would not say whether the equipment was functioning.

The landing gear was lowered one minute before the end of the flight at an altitude of more than 2,000 feet, and 20 seconds later the wing flaps were set to slow the plane down, after which the aircraft went through "severe pitch and roll," Chealander said.

The crew raised the landing gear at the last moment, just before the recording ran out. No mayday call came from the pilot.

Doug Hartmayer, a spokesman for Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which runs the Buffalo airport, said: "The plane simply dropped off the radar screen."

"Icing, if a significant buildup, is an aerodynamic impediment, if you will," Chealander said. "Airplanes are built with wings that are shaped a certain way. If you have too much ice, the shape of the wing can change requiring different airspeeds."

But he refused to draw any conclusions from the data, and cautioned: "We are not ruling anything in or anything out at this time."

Witnesses heard the plane sputtering before it plunged through the roof of the house, its tail section visible through the flames.

"It was like you were on the runway. It wasn't just different. It was like it was going to hit your house," said Michelle Winer, 46, who ran to look out her front window to see what was happening. "I saw a glow in the sky and I ran to get my husband. He thought I was crazy and then there was a huge explosion. You heard it and felt it."

When she ran outside with her husband, Winer met in the middle of the street with her friend Sandy Reilly, who had a houseful of guests after a wake for her father-in-law. The smoke burned their eyes. Several explosions followed as the entire neighborhood poured out of their homes and onto the frozen sidewalks.

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