3 Report Seeing Fluid Leak From Wing of Airliner Before Crash in Which 68 Died
Federal investigators checked reports Thursday that fluid had been seen leaking from a wing of the Galaxy Airlines plane on three flights the weekend before it crashed Monday south of here, killing 68 people.
One report of the leakage came from George Lamson Jr., 17, of St. Paul, Minn., one of three people who survived the crash of the plane, chartered for a gambling trip.
The other two reports came from pilots, including one who warned the Galaxy pilot that one of his engines was smoking and leaking fluid as he taxied for takeoff on a flight the day before the crash.
Flight 203 went down as the pilot attempted to return to Reno Cannon Airport shortly after takeoff, skidding into a recreational vehicle sales lot on U.S. 395 and bursting into flames after a series of explosions.
When Lamson boarded the craft for last Friday’s flight from Minneapolis to Reno, “he saw what he described as brake fluid leaking from the left wheel and puddling,” Jim Burnett, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news briefing late Wednesday.
“He asked the flight attendant to tell the captain and the captain said that was expansion from cold weather,” Burnett said. “I have no idea what basis he had for describing it as brake fluid.”
Burnett said a certified commercial pilot told the board he thought that the liquid was fuel when he saw the leakage as he boarded the turboprop Lockheed Electra Sunday at South Lake Tahoe for a Super Bowl flight to Oakland.
“As he was boarding the aircraft, he saw a steady drip of a liquid from under the left wing, and this had left a 2 1/2-foot puddle,” Burnett said. “He thought it had an odor of kerosene or jet fuel.”
Earlier Sunday, Burnett said, an Eastern Airlines pilot in Las Vegas reported seeing smoke and a flow of liquid from the left wing of the plane as it taxied down the runway for takeoff.
The Galaxy pilot said he would check out the engines at the next stop, and the Eastern pilot replied, “At least, this way, you’ll be ready.”
Burnett said the Galaxy was checked at South Lake Tahoe and the pilot found nothing wrong.
The safety board chief said the Electra spent a busy weekend, making trips between Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Reno, Oakland and Seattle.
Burnett said that the plane’s cockpit recorder, recovered Tuesday, will be sent to Washington for analysis and that its contents probably will be made public in about 60 days.
The tape in the flight data recorder, also found Tuesday, had run out, he said, and no information could be recovered.
Safety board experts at the crash site and in an airport hangar are examining each piece of wreckage from the plane in an effort to determine the cause of the crash.
Across town, a coroner’s team of at least 40 people worked at a temporary morgue at the Washoe County Fairgrounds, trying to identify the victims.
Coroner Vern McCarty said that by midday Thursday, autopsies on half of the victims had shown that deaths were caused by trauma or fire or both, he said.
Two of the three people who survived the nation’s worst air disaster since July, 1982, remained in critical condition Thursday.
