Wind Shear Alert Sounded Minutes After Plane Crash

Just minutes after a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet slammed to the ground at Dallas-Forth Worth airport Friday night, killing 133 persons, airport alert systems sounded an alarm designed to warn incoming pilots of a dangerous weather condition called wind shear.

Although the alarm had been silent in the minutes leading up to the crash, the alert showed that conditions almost certainly were right for dangerous wind currents as the L-1011 made its final approach.

The warning, too late to prevent a crash that many suspect was caused by wind shear, also points out the primitive nature of wind-alert systems, which often do not detect all such localized violent downdrafts that normally occur during thunderstorms. More sophisticated systems are on the drawing board.

A Delta spokesman, Matt Guilfoyle, Sunday blamed weather for the sudden plunge of Flight 191 as it approached Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

‘Act of God’

“It appears as if weather was the primary factor,” Guilfoyle said. “Hopefully, it will be viewed by the traveling public as what it was--an act of God.”

The aircraft bounced off a car on a nearby highway and killed one motorist, then skidded into some water tanks and burst into flames. Officials Sunday raised the death toll among those on board the plane to 132 with the identification of the body of a 2-year-old girl.

The child, Laurin Mahserejian, apparently had been an unticketed passenger. She was traveling with her mother, brother and two grandparents, all of whom were killed in the fifth-worst plane crash in the United States.

Thirty-one in the smoking section to the rear of the plane survived when the tail section broke off. Sixteen of the 31 persons injured in the crash remained hospitalized Sunday, 10 in critical condition.

The flight had originated in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and was bound for Los Angeles.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Ira Furman said Sunday that the low-level wind shear alert system on the field had set off an alarm in the control tower “within minutes” after Flight 191 came plummeting from the sky just short of its runway.

Controllers Warn Pilots

When such an alarm sounds, air traffic controllers immediately relay the warning to incoming pilots. “No captain is going to fly into that situation (wind shear) if he knows about it,” Guilfoyle said.

A wind shear is a turbulent downdraft that fans out as it reaches the ground, forcing a plane downward and popping it with strong head winds followed immediately by strong tail winds and often causing it to stall.