Jet’s Flight Appears Normal Until 6 Seconds Before Crash

Everything appeared normal until the final six seconds of the flight of a United Airlines jetliner that suddenly plunged nose down from about 1,000 feet and smashed into the ground, killing all 25 aboard, a federal safety official said Tuesday.

What happened in the final moments to cause Flight 585 to crash Sunday on approach to Colorado Springs Municipal Airport is still undetermined, said National Transportation Safety Board member John Lauber, who is heading the investigation.

All data collected by the Boeing 737’s flight recorder was “in the ballpark of what you would expect . . . all routine . . . nothing extraordinary,” Lauber told reporters. “Everything was pretty much steady state until the last six seconds.”

The craft made a “broad, smooth” normal right turn onto its final approach leg, with wing flaps set at a normal 10 degrees to slow for a landing, Lauber said, and then it rolled to its right and flew into the ground in a park about five miles from the runway.

The airliner buried itself and its passengers in a pit about 15 feet deep. Investigators removed the dead, then used a crane to extract the mangled, twisted and burned wreckage, which was spread over an area about half the size of a football field for study. No single piece was larger than a refrigerator, except for a wing that was largely intact.

“We can learn a great deal from what we have here,” Lauber said. “Our people are getting useful information.”

But as of Tuesday evening, the mystery remained unsolved.

A traffic controller who routinely handles takeoffs and landings at the airport said he was alternately watching the final approaches of the jetliner and a small plane through binoculars, and all seemed normal until the final seconds.

The controller, whose identity was not disclosed, told investigators that he was looking at the smaller plane when “something caught his eye,” and it seemed to him that the big jet was flying with its nose slightly up and to the right of normal.

It was not immediately apparent what significance--if any--the plane’s flight position might have.

But NTSB investigators were making additional checks in an attempt to determine whether the airliner might have been hit by wind shear, a sudden, violent shift in wind direction near the ground, which creates powerful downdrafts.