Investigation of Jet Crash Intensifies

The pilots of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 struggled with mechanical problems for at least six minutes as they descended over the Pacific Ocean, finally breaking radio contact and plunging into the waters off the Ventura County coast, a federal safety investigator said Tuesday.

Although the cause of the crash will not be officially determined for months, sources close to the investigation said they were focusing on the likelihood that a control system used to stabilize the plane’s pitch failed, sending it out of control.

Several other pilots saw the doomed plane in its final minutes, and investigators are hoping to learn more about the crash by talking to them, said John Hammerschmidt of the National Transportation Safety Board, who is overseeing the investigation. He briefed reporters after his arrival at a hastily established crash investigation headquarters in Port Hueneme.

Flight 261, en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and Seattle with 88 people aboard, crashed Monday afternoon after the pilots reported difficulties and asked for permission to land at Los Angeles International Airport. The plane, a twin-engine MD-83 built by McDonnell Douglas, crashed about 40 miles to the north, between Oxnard and the Channel Islands.

As the investigation into the crash was launched Tuesday and search and rescue operations continued, there were these other developments:

* Families and friends of the flight’s passengers and crew began arriving in Ventura, where Alaska Airlines booked blocks of rooms at several hotels.

* The bodies of an infant, a man and two women were taken to the Ventura County coroner’s office. They were not immediately identified.

* Alaska Airlines released the passenger manifest from the flight, and names on a list of the doomed flight turned into a portrait of diversity. A San Francisco radio talk show host and a Seattle newspaper wine columnist were among the passengers. One of Alaska’s best-known native leaders was on board, as well as a missionary couple who had long worked the streets of Seattle. There was a mother returning from readying her Puerto Vallarta vacation home for her grown son and his family.

There were seven employees of the airline and its sister airline, Horizon Air, traveling as passengers and most had brought friends or family. An off-duty Alaska Airlines flight attendant and her husband, the owner of a bistro, and their two young daughters were on board. The couple’s friends came too--another couple with their three school-age children and their infant.

A flotilla of Coast Guard and Navy ships, joined by aircraft and private fishing vessels, searched for survivors without success, finding only gruesome debris--and a pinging sound that could be coming from the flight data recorder, the cockpit recorder or both.

“We have heard a pinging,� Coast Guard Vice Adm. Tom Collins said. “We have a position located. This is obviously a prime lead.�

It hadn’t been determined when Navy divers would try to retrieve the flight recorders, which investigators hope will help tell the story of the crash.

The Gruesome Task of Salvage

As the sun rose Tuesday, at least 30 vessels were at sea in the vicinity of the crash site, a three-mile by five-mile stretch of ocean just north of the east end of Anacapa Island. These included a 378-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter and an even larger Navy warship with a helipad. They swept the ocean for chunks of wreckage and tried to maintain the increasingly unlikely hope of finding survivors. At least a dozen more vessels joined in later, trolling past chunks of yellow plastic, cracked food trays, shoes, seat cushions and occasional pieces of human flesh.

Fishermen hung precariously off the sides of boats, clapping and screaming to drive away flocks of diving, squawking sea gulls. The workers scooped up body parts and other debris with fishing nets and dropped them into plastic barrels and buckets.

The sea had calmed considerably overnight, with only a relatively mild chop and clear skies. The crew of Ron’s Rig, a 32-foot squid boat, circled patches of debris floating on the surface. Each time a piece of a body was spotted, Capt. Joe Villareal would blow his foghorn.

At one point, deckhand Charles Richards pulled a wallet out of the water with a net. “I’m not going to open it up,� he muttered. “I don’t want to know who it belonged to.�

About five minutes later, he pulled up in separate scoops a pair of glasses, a burnt piece of rubber hosing and some chunks of flesh. Not long after, he turned to his captain. “That’s it,� he said. “I’m done scooping for the day. I can’t take it.�

Nearby, Coast Guard cutters sliced through the water, trailed by smaller vessels whose crew members scanned the white water churned up by the bigger boats. Helicopters hovered just above the ocean surface, whipping up the water for the same purpose.

In the shadow of Anacapa Island, the boats crisscrossed and carved tiny circles in the water, leaving long white tails as crew members stopped to pick up flotsam.

The initial focus of the investigation clearly appeared to be on what is known as the horizontal stabilizer and the possibility of runaway stabilizer trim. Airline officials said Monday night that the pilots had radioed to say they were having trouble with the stabilizer.

The stabilizer is the wing-like part of an airplane’s tail that controls the up or down pitch of the plane’s nose. The trim is used to adjust the pitch of the stabilizer.

According to government records, the FAA has twice ordered Airworthiness Directives requiring inspection and repairs of the horizontal stabilizer trim system on DC-9/MD-80 aircraft models during the past four years.

There was no way from publicly available FAA records to determine if the Alaska Airlines plane had complied with either directive. It was possible, however, to find a variety of horizontal stabilizer problems reported on various models of the DC-9/MD-80 family of aircraft, although none for the plane that crashed.

In fact, Alaska Airlines has never had a previous incident or accident involving a problem with the horizontal stabilizer trim system on any of its aircraft, according to a review of FAA reports of all incidents and accidents the airline has submitted to it since 1987.

Pilots Reported Stability Problems

A rough scenario of the flight’s final minutes began to emerge Tuesday from Hammerschmidt’s recounting of ground-to-air communications between the doomed plane and air traffic controllers in Palmdale.

The plane’s last routine transmission came at 3:55 p.m., when air traffic controllers cleared Flight 261 to maintain an altitude of 31,000 feet and proceed along the Pacific coast from the Los Angeles area to San Francisco.

Between 4:10 p.m. and 4:16 p.m., as the plane descended abruptly, the flight crew reported problems keeping it stabilized. At one point, Hammerschmidt said, crew members reported a “jammed stabilizer� and said they were “experiencing trouble maintaining altitude.�

At 4:16 p.m., air traffic control cleared the flight to LAX and authorized a lower altitude. The pilots said “they needed to get down to 10,000 feet and they wanted to change their flight configuration and they wanted to do it over the bay,� possibly meaning Santa Monica Bay or the waters off Ventura County.

That was the last the tower heard from Flight 261. One minute later, an air traffic controller gave the plane permission to change its flight configuration and switch to another radio frequency. The crew never responded. At 4:21 p.m., the rapidly descending flight disappeared off radar screens.

Investigation Gets Underway

Among the tasks facing crash investigators was interviewing four pilots who saw the Alaska Airlines plane in the minutes leading up to the crash. They included pilots from Skywest Airlines, an Aero Commander twin-engine aircraft and an Alaska Airlines plane that was trailing the troubled flight. The fourth plane was not described.

David Ivey, an investigator with the NTSB, said he had interviewed two of the pilots, but that the interviews hadn’t yielded much information.

A team of 10 NTSB investigators, plus officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Navy, arrived at the Point Mugu Naval Station early Tuesday to launch the investigation into the crash. More personnel were expected.

The team had its first meeting later Tuesday morning at Port Hueneme to set up various investigative groups. The FAA, Alaska Airlines, Boeing (as successor to McDonnell Douglas) and Pratt & Whitney, which manufactured the engines, are among the organizations taking part in the investigation. Also assisting are the Navy, the Coast Guard, and the FBI--until the possibility of a crime is ruled out.

Bill Weaver, vice president for maintenance and engineering for Alaska Airlines, said the company is cooperating completely with the inquiry. He confirmed a report that its aircraft maintenance regimen is under investigation by a grand jury in Northern California.

“There is an investigation going on . . . but we don’t believe they are in any way related [to the crash],� he said.

At the Port Hueneme Seabee Base, rescue workers stood guard over pieces of wreckage. Bits of gray metal lay drying on the Navy base’s concrete dock before being packed into large wooden boxes.

Hope for finding anyone alive--never high, given the flight’s violent end--became ever more slender with each passing hour.

“The challenge is time,� said Collins. “As time clicks off, risks go up.�

More than most air crashes, perhaps, the Flight 261 disaster was especially keenly felt by the airline that operated the craft, since so many Alaska Airlines employees and their loved ones were aboard. On Tuesday, Alaska Airlines flight attendants donned light blue ribbons--a color akin to the sea--to commemorate the crew and seven traveling employees who also died.

Along Ventura County beaches, a spontaneous outpouring of prayer and grief continued. Some people dropped flowers onto the beach and harbor side. A Boeing mechanic clad in his navy blue jumpsuit with “McDonnell Douglas� embroidered on the back knelt and prayed.

“It’s about karma for me. Those were 88 souls, not 88 individuals,� said Ben Cruz, who has worked for the aircraft builder for 11 years.

United Airlines flight attendant Karen Massey, 40, walked her dog to a beachside memorial near her house in the Silver Strand area of Oxnard, stopping by the six-foot wooden cross erected close to the surf and decorated with rosary beads and fresh daisies.

“When this stuff happens, you realize it could have been you,� she said, watching the water and wiping away tears. “It’s staggering. Staggering.�

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For updates on the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 and more Times photos, go to the Times’ Web site: http://ukobiw.net./flight261

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Crash Salvage

The Coast Guard and military have joined forces to search for wreckage from Alaska Airlines Flight 261. Workers are dealing with strong currents and water temperature in the mid-50s at the three-by-five mile search area.

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Sources’: U.S. Navy; U.S. Coast Guard; Edison Chouest offshore Inc.

Research by JULIE SHEER and RICHARD WINTON / Los Angeles Times

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Contributing to the coverage of the Alaska Airlines crash were Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Hector Becerra, Bettina Boxall, Miles Corwin, Tina Dirmann, Sue Fox, Anna Gorman, Tom Gorman, Carla Hall, Robert Lee Hotz, Mitchell Landsberg, Usha Lee McFarling, Joe Mozingo, Ann O’Neill, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Richard O’Reilly, Gary Polakovic, Carla Rivera, Catherine Saillant, Doug Shuit, Beth Shuster, Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Matt Surman, Margaret Talev and Erin Texeira and correspondent Richard Winton in Southern California; Eric Bailey, Charles Piller, Tim Reiterman and Julie Tamaki in San Francisco; Mark Gladstone in Sacramento; and Nicholas Riccardi in Seattle. Also contributing were Times Community News reporters Catherine Blake, Tony Lystra, Gina Piccalo, Katie Cooper and Holly J. Wolcott. Times librarians Cary Schneider, Janet Lundblad, Jacci Cenacveira, John Jackson, Robin Mayper and Steve Tice aided in research. Times staff photographers covering the crash were Bob Carey, Bryan Chan, Carlos Chavez, Carolyn Cole, Anne Cusack, Ricardo De Aratanha, Gina Ferazzi, Gary Friedman, Paul Morse, Steve Osman, Anacleto Rapping and Spencer Weiner.