Pilot Tape Reveals Alarm Went Off During Takeoff : Crew Heard Warning of a Jet Stall

GRAPEVINE, Tex. — The first cockpit tape recording recovered from the shattered Boeing 727 showed that pilots heard an alarm indicating an engine problem right after takeoff, seconds before the jetliner crashed in flames, killing 13 people, a federal spokesman said today.

Nearly 100 people, many leaping through thick smoke and blazing jet fuel, survived the crash of the jetliner that broke open and burned during takeoff Wednesday morning at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.

The recording of cockpit conversations, reviewed in Washington, indicated the engine problem, Lee Dickinson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said today.

“Shortly after takeoff there was a sound (alarm),” he said. It was apparently a “warning a stall condition may be approaching,” Dickinson said. “Shortly after that, there was some conversation about an engine problem.”

The information was obtained after safety board officials listened to the cockpit tape recording once, and they will listen to it again, he said.

In Good Shape

NTSB investigator Warren Wandel said the aircraft flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, the so-called “black boxes,” were found in good shape. They were being examined in Washington.

Thirteen people--all from Texas--aboard the jetliner bound for Salt Lake City were killed in Wednesday morning’s crash, among them three members of one family, two other couples and two flight attendants. Delta in Atlanta this morning raised the count of survivors from 94 to 95, saying a third infant was reported to have been aboard the flight. Babies are not ticketed, and this raised initial confusion on the number of survivors.

Witnesses said there appeared to have been a fire or explosion in an engine on takeoff, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jack Barker said today. “But that was not confirmed. This was merely what some witnesses were reporting.”

The crash came three years after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered an investigation into Pratt & Whitney’s JT8D engines because of reports that cracks in the combustion chambers of one engine contributed to a crash in Manchester, England, in August, 1985, that killed 55 people.

Pratt & Whitney, after meetings with the FAA and NTSB, drew up a revamped list of service procedures and maintenance recommendations for the engines.

‘Fairly New’

Flight 1141 was powered by a modified version of the JT8D engine. In Atlanta, a Delta spokesman said the three engines on the plane, which was built in 1973, were “fairly new” and not original equipment.

Nearly two dozen investigators from the NTSB converged on the crash site today. Spokesmen for Boeing and for Pratt & Whitney said they will also send investigators.

Wearing gloves and carrying bags, some investigators crawled inside the charred hulk, using the same cracks where passengers braved flaming jet fuel 24 hours earlier. They also climbed on the lone remaining attached wing, which had been turned red hot by the fire, to peer into the cabin through blackened windows.

At one point, about 20 of them gathered, peering intently at the left rear engine. They removed the engine shroud and looked inside.

Among the survivors were the three pilots, officials said, including Capt. Larry Davis, 48, of Greenville, a Delta pilot since 1965 and a Boeing 727 captain for the last nine years. Parkland Hospital officials said Davis, who was pinned in the wreckage, was talking but in shock. His injuries were described as traumatic.