Survivors Recount Tale of Fiery Texas Jet Crash : HEAD Officials Sift Debris for Clues to Cause

The relatives of the dead arrived to identify their loved ones, the survivors rejoiced to be alive and scores of investigators combed a sea of charred debris Saturday, trying to determine why a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet crashed Friday, killing 129 persons aboard and one victim on the ground.

The jet, a Lockheed L-1011 wide body bound for Dallas from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., crashed at the north end of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport shortly after 6 p.m. as it was attempting to land in a driving thunderstorm that engulfed the plane on the final approach to the runway.

Federal investigators said they had found no indication that the pilot of Delta Flight 191 was aware the doomed jetliner was about to crash.

Delta officials speculated that the most likely cause could be a strong, turbulent downdraft known as wind shear, although federal investigators said there was no immediate evidence to support such speculation.

Although 130 died in the fiery disaster--making it the worst in Texas aviation history--31 others, including three flight attendants, were spared. They apparently lived through the crash because they were sitting in the aft section of the cabin, the only part of the plane left intact after it first hit two cars on a busy four-lane highway, then bounded across a field and clipped storage tanks before breaking up near the end of the runway. It was Delta’s first fatal accident since 1973, when 89 persons were killed in a crash in Boston.

“It’s great to be alive,” said Gil Greene, one of those who lived to tell of the last seconds of Flight 191.

But for others, it was a day of pain. Relatives streamed into Dallas with photos and medical and dental records to assist the Dallas County medical examiner’s office in the grim task of identifying the dead. By late Saturday afternoon, the medical examiner, Dr. Charles Petty, said only 16 passengers had been positively identified. He said many of the dead had no identification on them when they were pulled from the wreckage and brought to the Dallas County morgue.

Gov. Mark White visited two of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, and he told relatives of the dead that everything was being done to expedite positive identification.

‘Worst Possible Thing’

“We are grieved by the loss of those people,” he said. “It’s the worst possible thing. . . . My heart goes out to them.”

Under hot, sunny skies--so different from the furious storm of the day before--investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board began a systematic analysis of the strewn wreckage, searching for clues to explain why the jet had nose-dived onto the busy highway hundreds of yards from the end of the runway.

The 15 NTSB investigators were joined by dozens of representatives from other federal agencies, as well as a six-man team from Los Angeles-based Lockheed, manufacturer of the aircraft.

Others went through the wreckage, spread over hundreds of yards of grassland and Tarmac, wearing rubber gloves, searching for more human remains. Large cranes were brought in to lift heavy pieces of the wreckage so that the searchers could examine what was underneath. Off in the grass, cordoned off by police lines, sat the blackened tail section.

Ira Furman, a spokesman for the NTSB, said it would probably be weeks before any conclusive finding on the cause of the crash would be issued. And a member of the NTSB, G.H. Patrick Bursley, said it would be premature to specualte on any probable cause.

“You can foreclose a fruitful area of investigation if you decide something too early,” he said.

Concentrating on Weather

However, it was apparent the investigators were concentrating on the weather, particularly the phenomenon known as wind shear, as a major suspect in the disaster. The other meteorological possibility, lightning, was all but discounted because advanced aero-engineering had virtually eliminated it as a danger to passenger jets.

“Lightning is not supposed to bring down a plane,” said Furman. “We are giving considerable attention to the question of wind shear.”

Wind shear has been blamed for 16 aviation accidents in the last 20 years, including the Pan American Airlines crash at Kenner, La., in 1982 that killed 154. It occurs, usually with storms, when sudden, multidirectional shifts in wind speed or direction cause a powerful burst of wind that strikes an aircraft suddenly from an unexpected direction. Wind shears cause loss of power and altitude and are most dangerous on landing approaches.

But at an NTSB press conference here early Saturday evening, Bursley said the first full day’s investigation had not turned up any positive indication that wind shear was to blame. He said data from wind speed sensors located around the airport and tapes of the conversations between the tower and other pilots showed no evidence of wind shear in the 15 minutes before the crash. Also, a preliminary reading of the cockpit and flight data recorders showed no evidence of wind shear.

However, Bursley did not rule out the possibility of wind shear as a cause, noting that the weather phenomenon often is localized and might not have been picked up by the ground sensors, the nearest of which was about a mile from the scene of the crash.

No Pilot Reports

He said no pilots reported wind shear to the tower before the crash and “there is nothing in our preliminary look at the cockpit voice recorder that suggests any concern” about wind shear on the part of the Delta pilot, Edward Connors, before the accident.

Furman also said it was not unusual for a tail section to survive when the rest of an airplane is destroyed and he speculated that the 31 who survived did so because the nose of the jet bore most of the brunt of first impact on the ground--the crash on the highway in which a car was hit and the driver decapitated. Because the tail section is the most likely to survive, the so-called “black boxes” of commercial jets, which record voice transmissions and mechanical readings, are stored there.

Delta Air Lines listed 27 Californians, including two infants, among the victims, but the identities of only five could definitely be confirmed by The Times Saturday.

They were Dr. Paul B. Salmon, 66, of Whittier; Charles Haselhorst, 42, of Hermosa Beach; Ramon Robert Hooke of Tustin; Kim Neel of North Hollywood, and Donald Moore of Valencia.

Salmon, a nationally known educator, had retired as director of the 18,000-member American Assn. of School Adminstrators in April, and had held the Irving Melbro distinguished professor chair at USC since then.

Haselhorst was an executive with the Century City advertising agency of Abert, Newhoff & Burr, according to family friend, Bob Evans.

Hooke was employed by Toyota Motor Sales Inc. of Torrance, according to his wife, Elaine Hooke.