Plane Crash Probe Focuses on Engine : Aviation: Sightseeing craft may have had only one propeller operating when it plunged near the Grand Canyon, killing 10.

As federal safety investigators flew to a remote stretch of the Grand Canyon where 10 people died in the crash of a sightseeing plane, aviation authorities speculated Saturday that one of the aircraft’s engines had failed.

National Transportation Safety Board inspectors from Washington and Los Angeles were en route to the crash site Saturday, cautioning that it is still too early to assess the cause of the crash.

But aviation sources said Saturday that the wreckage of the twin-engine Cessna 402 aircraft contained hints that the right engine appeared to have stalled before the plane crashed into a grassy field Friday afternoon, killing the pilot and all nine tourists on board.

Officials said the crash site indicates that the propeller-driven aircraft had swerved to the right after taking off from the Grand Canyon West Airport near Meadview. The plane was about 150 feet in the air and 1,000 yards south of the airstrip when it came down in a field of sagebrush, skidding 100 feet before it stopped. Officials said the plane’s swerve to the right indicated that it had power only in its left wing.

And they also noted that three blades from the plane’s left propeller were severely bent and that the propeller had been torn from the plane--indications that it was spinning when the plane crashed.

By contrast, the plane’s right propeller was not bent, officials said, indicating that it was not spinning at the moment of impact.

Under FAA certification guidelines, experienced pilots are expected to be able to take off successfully even when one engine fails, officials said.

Leon Lindsay, a Federal Aviation Administration official guarding the wreckage until NTSB inspectors arrived, said investigators have not found any witnesses. Except for a few airfield workers at the landing strip, the area is largely uninhabited.

One of the first rescue workers who reached the crash said Saturday that he saw no evidence of fire and no signs of life among the crash victims.

“None of them had a chance the way that plane came down,” said John Cooper, 50, a volunteer emergency medical technician who works with U. S. Forest Service rangers at the South Cover Ranger Station, 35 miles from the crash.

“The way that plane looked, it just pancaked right down flat. It just flat dropped,” Cooper said.

When he arrived, he said, he found the passengers trapped inside the aircraft, “compressed into little spaces that no one could fit into alive.”

Cooper said he “crawled in the wreckage and checked the pulses. Nothing.”

Mohave County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Jim Stull said the victims were an American pilot, two American couples, couples from Britain and Germany, and a German man. Their identities were withheld until relatives could be notified. Stull said all victims ranged in age from 20 to 40.

The flight originated at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Authorities said the plane had landed at the Grand Canyon West strip. Passengers were taken by bus to the edge of the canyon and returned to the airstrip for the 75-mile flight back to Las Vegas. The plane took off at 2:20 p.m., heading south.

The plane was operated by Adventure Airlines, a tenant of Scenic Airlines, a larger tour operator.

Aviation officials who asked not to be identified said that last week, the NTSB issued a report criticizing the FAA’s Las Vegas station for a “marked absence of effective oversight” in monitoring the activities of another Las Vegas-based sightseeing airline. The report did not mention Adventure Airlines, the officials said.

The Friday incident was the eighth time in six years that sightseeing planes have crashed into the national park. At least 59 people have died since 1986.

Officials have estimated that 750,000 tourists take 50,000 flights over the park each year. The crashes have led environmental groups and naturalists to demand a ban on Grand Canyon flights. But authorities have responded by only restricting some air routes and banning low-flying flights.

Times staff writer Stephen Braun in Los Angeles contributed to this story.