Bumps, rattles heard on plane’s recorders

Investigators say a bumping and rattling sound was heard on a Continental Airlines plane moments before it veered off a runway and crashed at Denver International Airport on Saturday.

A review of the voice and data recorders on Monday revealed both the odd noise and that the crew tried to stop the takeoff after the plane started drifting.

The bumping and rattling sound was first heard 41 seconds after the plane started down the runway, said Robert Sumwalt, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board. Four seconds later, one of the crew members called for the takeoff to be aborted. The recording ends six seconds later, probably because the plane slammed down on the ground after hurtling off an embankment, Sumwalt said.

Thirty-eight people were injured, including the plane’s captain.

Sumwalt said investigators have found no problems with the plane’s engines, tires or brakes, but are not yet ruling anything out.

The plane traveled about 2,000 feet after leaving the runway, crossing a grassy strip and a taxiway before going off the embankment, hitting the ground at its base. It then went up a slight hill, over an access road and then down another small hill on the other side of the road before landing on its belly, its landing gear shorn off.

Lead NTSB investigator Bill English said the plane’s data recorder shows the thrusters on both of the plane’s engines were switched to reverse. He said that normally happens when crew members try to stop a takeoff.

Investigators have not yet interviewed the plane’s captain because, Sumwalt said, he is physically unable. He didn’t elaborate. They have talked to the first officer, who said the plane began moving off the center of the runway as it reached about 103 mph.

The investigation has been hampered because members of the team that will analyze the black box voice and data recorders were having difficulty getting back to Washington, D.C., because of the storms across the country.

The nation was shivering under a wide-ranging cold snap Monday that buried runways and highways from Washington state to Maine.

Thousands of travelers were stranded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, trapped since the weekend by what officials there called the most severe winter storm in 40 years. The Portland, Ore., airport was largely iced over.

Portland’s mayor-elect, Sam Adams, called the storm “the most severe weather event we’ve had since 1968. We are definitely taxed.”

Frosty weather lingered over the Midwest and Northeast as well.

More than 50,000 people were without power in Indiana, and a 134-mile stretch of the thruway in western New York state was shut overnight because of blowing snow.

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Times staff writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and researcher Stuart Glascock in Seattle contributed to this report.