Flight Recorders Ruined in Crash of Airliner, Philippine Officials Say

Investigators said Sunday that both flight recorders retrieved from the wreckage of a Philippine Airlines plane that crashed on a domestic flight were damaged beyond use. All 50 people aboard were killed in the crash.

The plane was bound from Manila to Baguio City, a resort 130 miles to the north, carrying 46 passengers and four crew members when it crashed into the side of a mountain and burned Friday.

Airline spokesman Enrique Santos said the cockpit voice recorder was destroyed on impact and the flight data recorder, located in the tail, burned.

Meanwhile, military doctors Sunday began the task of identifying the charred and dismembered remains of the crash victims.

The remains were flown to the capital Saturday night after being recovered by Philippine and U.S. rescuers from a deep ravine below Mount Ugo, a 5,800-foot peak nine miles outside Baguio.

About 150 grieving relatives, many of them sobbing, donned white surgical masks to help doctors identify the bodies of their kin at a memorial chapel in a Manila suburb.

In Chicago, relatives said Sunday that eight members of a suburban Chicago family who had flown to the Philippines to attend a wedding were among the victims.

The victims were identified as Marina Dinzey, 44, and her children, Tito Jr., 21, and Felice, 14; Buenventura Alcantara, 40, his wife, Exaltacion Alcantara, 41, and their children, Lisa 10, and Ben, 8, and Adison Daliva, 21. All are from suburban Glenview.

A ninth relative, Armando Alcantara, of Manila, also died in the crash.

Officials in Manila said that American John Neill, who lived in the Philippine city of Baguio, was also killed.

In Dallas, Texas Instruments said Neill, 47, was president and director of the company’s Philippine operations.