More Parts Found at Milwaukee Runway : One of Jet’s Engines Was Damaged Before Crash, Probers Find

Federal investigators searching a runway at Gen. Mitchell Airport on Sunday found more engine fragments that may provide additional clues to why a jetliner crashed moments after takeoff here on Friday, killing all 31 persons aboard.

Officials of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is heading the investigation into the crash of the Midwest Express DC-9, said portions of compressor blades, shrouds and other jet engine parts were found Sunday in the same area where other engine parts had been found the day before.

Jim Burnett, chairman of the NTSB, said a preliminary examination of the plane’s two engines, both of which were recovered relatively intact, showed that one of them had sustained damage before impact.

Stall Warning Alarm

Burnett also disclosed at a news conference Sunday night that a preliminary review of the cockpit voice recorder recovered from the wreckage revealed the sounds of both a stall warning alarm and a ground proximity alarm before the crash.

“Such things are not unexpected in a recorder from a plane that has crashed,” he said.

The board chairman emphasized that “simple failure” of one of the plane’s two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7 engines--without any additional, complicating factors--was probably not enough to cause the crash.

“You’re supposed to be able to fly even if you’ve lost power,” Burnett said.

Pilots Trained for It

DC-9 pilots are trained in takeoffs with simulated engine failure, and sources close to the investigation said that, in normal situations, the plane--even with a full fuel, passenger and cargo load--can lift off the runway on one engine and gain sufficient altitude to remain airborne and make a safe landing at an airport.

But NTSB sources said that if an engine disintegrates, it can hurl fragments that might damage control surfaces, rupture hydraulic lines or otherwise cripple an airplane in a way that might cause it to veer out of control.

Meanwhile, specialists in Washington began examining the voice recorder and the plane’s flight data recorder. Both were recovered from the charred debris on Saturday.

Timothy Haeksema, president of Midwest Express, said the line’s flights were resumed as scheduled on Sunday, using two DC-9s similar to the plane that crashed--one purchased recently from Continental Airlines and the other from Air Express, a freight carrier. The plane that crashed on Friday had been purchased from Avenza Airlines, a Venezuelan carrier.

Airline Assisting Families

A Midwest spokesman said that about a dozen families of persons who died in the crash had accepted offers of assistance and had been assigned a Midwest representative “to help them through this terrible time.” The airline set up a special lounge on an upper floor in the airport’s main terminal building, and has been providing food, lodging and transportation to out-of-town relatives who came to Milwaukee after the crash.

Less than 50 yards from that lounge, about 1,200 local officials and other visitors gathered on Saturday night to sip champagne and listen to Glenn Miller music, in a celebration of a recently completed, multimillion-dollar expansion of the airport.

“We’re still an airport, and there are still flights going in and out,” said Jim Kerr, an assistant director at the airport.

“Life goes on.”