Oxygen Tanks’ Role in Fire on Jet Examined

Federal investigators are inspecting oxygen equipment to determine if it was damaged in the Feb. 1 runway disaster at Los Angeles International Airport and possibly increased the intensity of the fire inside a jetliner after it smashed into a small commuter plane, officials said Sunday.

National Transportation Safety Board member Jim Burnett said equipment that regulated the flow of oxygen in supply tanks for the pilot and co-pilot on USAir Flight 1493 was sent to a federal laboratory in Washington.

The tank was in a storage compartment at the front of the plane. Seven passengers died, most from smoke inhalation, in the first-class section of the jet, even though the plane’s right front door had been opened and the floor of the plane was only three to four feet above the ground after its landing gear collapsed in the accident.

One crew member and two passengers apparently escaped through the front door, but investigators have been unable to explain why more passengers could not flee by that route.

“People died who obviously had come forward looking for a way out,” Burnett said.

He said oxygen apparently had been released from the tank and investigators want to know why. The tank that supplies the cockpit crew with oxygen is one of several on the jet, but Burnett said no oxygen apparently escaped from the others.

Two of the jet’s six escape routes, the left front and rear doors, were blocked by wreckage or fire when the jet skidded into an abandoned fire station after colliding with the SkyWest commuter on the runway. In addition, the exit over the left wing was partially blocked, but two passengers managed to escape through it.

Most of the 67 passengers who escaped clambered out the wing exit on the right side or exited through the right rear door.

All 12 passengers and crew on the SkyWest Metroliner died.

Investigators have finished inspecting the charred and crumpled wreckage of both planes and turned them back to the airlines, Burnett said.

Agnes Huff, spokeswoman for USAir, said salvage companies were dismantling what remains of the two aircraft.

Burnett said investigators have kept some parts of the USAir Boeing 737, such as the oxygen regulators, for further investigation.

It probably will be several months before an official cause of the runway collision is announced. Officials want to determine everything that contributed to the accident, which occurred when air traffic controller Robin Lee Wascher mistakenly allowed the SkyWest commuter to move onto the runway just as she was giving the USAir jetliner permission to land in the same spot.

Wascher has told investigators that she never saw the SkyWest plane and thought its access to the runway was blocked by another aircraft.