Crashed Jetliner Probe Turns to Pilot Training

The investigation into last Friday’s crash of a Delta Air Lines jetliner here began shifting away from the scene of the accident Wednesday as federal safety officials announced a move to Atlanta to examine pilot records at Delta headquarters there.

G. H. Patrick Bursley, a retired Coast Guard admiral who has been heading up the National Transportation Safety Board probe, said the NTSB staff will review Delta’s records on pilot training programs, especially on the procedures the pilots are taught to use when flying in heavy weather.

The Lockheed L-1011 jumbo jetliner slammed into the ground while trying to land during a thunderstorm, killing 132 passengers and crew members and one person on the ground.

Cause Still Unknown

The cause of the crash remains undetermined, but speculation has centered on low-level wind shear, a meteorological phenomenon in which an aircraft making a landing approach can encounter sudden, strong downdrafts.

The giant, three-engine jet, which had slowed below normal approach speed to provide increased spacing between it and another plane landing ahead of it, slammed suddenly into the ground, several hundred yards short of the runway.

Plunging down on a highway--and at least two cars--just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the burning aircraft skidded for several hundred feet before an engine on the left wing dug into the ground in an open field, causing the plane to veer sharply to the left.

Bursley said the left turn apparently drove the plane into two large water tanks, and when the L-1011 struck them, the tail section broke free of the main body of the wreckage, coming to rest about 150 feet away.

Survivors in Tail Section

The 28 passengers and three flight attendants who survived the crash were in that tail section.

Those who died were trapped in the burning remainder of the fuselage.

Bursley said that while the NTSB’s operations team is moving to Atlanta--and other teams that have finished their preliminary efforts here are beginning to return to the NTSB home base in Washington--some work remains to be completed here.

One team will continue talking with air traffic controllers--and reviewing their records--in an effort to verify exactly what conversations took place between the cockpit and the airport tower in the moments before the crash.

Frantic Warning Told

Data from the plane’s on-board cockpit voice recorder indicates that moments after the tower advised the pilot to reduce speed, controllers frantically warned him to abort his landing.

The warning apparently came too late. As the recorder picked up the controller’s shout “Delta, go around!” it simultaneously recorded the sound of the jetliner beginning to break up, according to Bursley.

The NTSB’s findings and recommendations are not expected for several months, although Bursley pointed out that if the board turns up any definitive evidence of critical shortcomings in Federal Aviation Administration flight rules and policy, emergency recommendations could be made before then.