Crash Kills All 31 on Airliner at Milwaukee

A twin-engine Midwest Express DC-9 jetliner, bound for Atlanta with 31 persons aboard, radioed that it had “an emergency” shortly after takeoff Friday afternoon and crashed into a wooded area south of Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport.

No one survived the crash and explosion.

Witnesses said that the plane began to bank to the right as it rose to about 1,000 feet after taking off on a sunny and windy afternoon. Then, they said, the plane continued to roll, spinning upside down as it plummeted from the sky, crashing nose-first into the ground.

Engine Explosion Reported

At least one witness reportedly told of seeing the right engine explode and fall burning just before the plane twisted its way to earth.

It was the most recent disaster in the deadliest year for airplane travel in history. More than 1,400 persons have died in commercial plane accidents worldwide so far in 1985.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said that the pilot of Midwest Express Flight 105, which originated in Madison and had stopped in Milwaukee, told the control tower, “I have an emergency.” But he did not explain what the emergency was before the plane crashed at approximately 3:25 p.m.

Flight Recorder Found

A National Transportation Safety Board team from Washington flew to Milwaukee Friday night to begin investigating the accident. The flight recorder was recovered and sent to Washington for analysis, authorities said.

A temporary morgue was set up in a meadow beside the forest of oak and elm trees where the wreckage of the plane, mostly in small chunks, still smoldered several hours after the crash.

“It will be a while before we have everybody identified,” one official said. “Some are pretty mangled.”

The airline arranged to have some relatives and friends flown by other carriers from Atlanta to Milwaukee late Friday.

“There’s not much of the plane left,” Milwaukee County Sheriff Richard E. Artison said. What was left appeared to have been charred by the fire, and for several hours firefighters battled small blazes that broke out in the woods.

“It’s just quite tragic,” said Artison, sweat dripping off his face as he and his force ran yellow plastic strips around the crash site to keep out spectators.

The smell of jet fuel permeated the muggy air, and chain saws could be heard clearing the dense, swampy woods surrounding the plane. A sheriff’s deputy was sent for mosquito repellent and floodlights bathed the crash site.

Even the early arrivals at the scene, less than a mile south of the runway on airport property, had no hope of helping. The heat of the blazing wreckage was too intense. Later, it appeared that pieces of the plane had melted into the ground during the inferno.

Only a Prayer

“All I could do was offer a prayer for them . . . commend them to God,” said Father Karl Acker, who rushed from nearby St. Alexander’s Roman Catholic Church to the site.

Father Joseph B. Frederick, a priest who administered last rites, said that the dead pilot still clutched the controls as though trying to bring the plane out of its dive.

Many motorists in the area south of Milwaukee witnessed the crash.

“It just looked dead in the sky, then it turned over and fell,” said Tom Schmidt, one witness. “The next thing I saw was a big orange thing in the sky” rising above the trees as the plane crashed.

“I saw a lot of smoke,” Scott Scrima, an employee at the airport from Waukesha, Wis., said. “I saw a lot of little pieces. I didn’t see anything big. It looked like a forest fire.”

Thickness of the woods and of traffic on nearby streets hampered the efforts of police officers and firefighters in suburban Oak Creek to reach the burning wreckage.

‘Total Devastation’

“There is nothing we could have done if we had been right there on the scene,” Asst. Milwaukee Fire Chief Richard Seelen said. “It was total devastation.”

A Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy said: “Pieces of bodies are everywhere. Most of the clothing was burned off people.”

On the plane were 26 passengers, four crew members and one airline employee. Among the passengers were 10 employees of Kimberly-Clark Corp., of which Midwest Express Airlines is a wholly owned subsidiary. United Press International reported that all of the victims were from Wisconsin.

Midwest Express, established in June of last year and based in Appleton, Wis., had been operating four planes, including three McDonnell Douglas DC-9s, and began two-round-trip-a-day service between Milwaukee and Atlanta last May. Early this week, it began flying between Madison and Mitchell Field, which serves Milwaukee and Racine.

The airline had reconfigured its three DC-9s, reducing seating capacity to 60 from 85 to provide more space and comfort for business travelers.

Brake Problems

A check of government records showed that the DC-9 that crashed had brake problems last year severe enough to cause inspection or maintenance personnel to file a service difficulty report with the Federal Aviation Administration.

The brake problems were described in a report dated Aug. 14, 1984. They were attributed to a cracked hydraulic cylinder valve that released fluid.

The FAA records included no reports of engine problems on the crashed plane.

However, a computer count by The Times found 31 service difficulty reports describing engine problems on DC-9s in the U.S. air carrier fleet over the last five years. Not counted were difficulties caused by bird hits or by snow or water ingestion along runways.

The engine problems ranged from backfiring and vibration to flame-outs.

At McDonnell Douglas Corp. in Long Beach, where the DC-9 is manufactured, spokesman Donald N. Hanson said that the plane “as a whole has a very good history of service.” The last major fatal accident involving a DC-9 was on April 4, 1977, when 70 persons died in a Southern Air Lines crash at New Hope, Ga.

Pratt & Whitney Engines

At the Pratt & Whitney Corp., in East Hartford, Conn., where engines for the DC-9 are made, spokesman Phillip Giaramita said that the engines on the downed plane were of a different model than the Pratt & Whitney engine that blew up last month on a British Airtours jet. The British plane crashed, killing 55 persons.

Of Friday’s crash, Giaramita said, “We have no indication, as of now, that this incident was engine-related.”

The first major air crash of the year was on Jan. 21, when 68 were killed as a chartered Galaxy prop-jet gamblers’ special plunged to earth after takeoff at Reno, Nev.

On Feb. 19, 148 died when an Iberia Boeing 727 crashed into a Spanish mountain.

On June 23, an Air-India Boeing 747 vanished over the Atlantic, killing 329. A bomb was suspected but not proven.

74 Died in Jungle

An additional 74 died on July 24, when a Colombian Air Force DC-6 crashed in the Amazon jungle while flying passengers because of an airline strike.

Then came the Aug. 2 crash of a Delta Air Lines L-1011 when trying to land during a violent thunderstorm at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, taking 135 lives.

Ten days later, 520 persons were killed when a Japan Air Lines 747 crashed on a remote Japanese mountaintop after an apparent rear-fuselage structural failure.

And, on Aug. 22, the British Airtours Boeing 737 crashed in England.

Contributing to this story were Times Staff Writers Jack Jones and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles.