Transcript Paints Grisly Portrait of Jet in Distress

As lightning flashed across a stormy sky and a priest walked among the dead intoning last rites, federal officials said Friday the reason a USAir jetliner crashed on a nearby hilltop remained a mystery and revealed that a member of the cockpit crew shouted seconds before the plane hit: “Oh, God! . . . Traffic emergency! Oh, s---! Ahhh! Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahhhh!”

There was no hint in the crew member’s words about what caused the crash Thursday evening which killed all 132 people aboard the plane. The words were in a transcript of radio transmissions between the cockpit and a Pittsburgh area air traffic controller, made public by the Federal Aviation Administration. The transcript drew a horrifying portrait of an airliner in distress.

7:02:22 (p.m. EDT), air traffic controller: “USAir (Flight) 427, turn left, heading one-zero-zero. Traffic will be 1 to 2 o’clock, six miles, northbound Jetstream climbing out of (runway) 33 for 5,000 (feet).”

7:02:32, USAir 427: “We’re looking for the traffic, turning to one-zero-zero.”

Federal officials said this was acknowledgment of a routine warning to expect another plane in the area--but so far away it could not have caused the crash. Then, suddenly:

7:03:10, USAir 427: “Oh (unintelligible). Oh, God!”

7:03:14, controller: “USAir 427, maintain 6,000. Over?”

7:03:16, USAir 427: “Traffic emergency! Oh, s---! Ahhh! Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahhhh”

7:03:24, controller: “USAir 427, Pittsburgh (calling).”

The controller repeated the plea three more times. And then, finally, came the last transmission:

7:04:38, controller: “USAir 427, radar contact lost!”

A wind-whipped rain turned the hilltop crash site into a bog Friday as the priest struggled through the mud tending to the dead and workers tried to identify and sort charred and dismembered human remains. U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena visited the scene and told reporters afterward: “We’re all very much at a loss to explain this accident.”

The plane, a Boeing 737 flying from Chicago to Pittsburgh, plunged out of a clear sky. It was not known whether the crew member who was recorded by Pittsburgh controllers was the pilot or co-pilot, but his words gave no indication of weather problems. Indeed, Carl Vogt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said a cockpit voice recorder, which captured what crew members said to one another, also “does not add much to why this happened.”

Vogt told a news conference that pieces of light insulating material from the aircraft were found two miles from the crash site. But he indicated they were light enough to have been blown away from the scene. “We don’t have any indication,” he said, “that it (the plane) was not intact upon impact. . . . There is no indication of (midair) explosions.”

Investigators found both of the plane’s jet engines, Vogt said, and their turbine blades were bent, indicating that they were under power when the aircraft hit the ground. Information on a digital flight data recorder, he said, showed that the engines were operating at identical power settings.

At about 6,000 feet, Vogt said, “the aircraft rolled (abnormally) left, and it was 23 seconds until it hit the ground.”

Nine eyewitnesses, interviewed Friday, said nothing fell from the plane and there were no explosions, Vogt reported. Some recounted hearing a loud thrusting noise, followed by a whine, typical of a jet engine accelerating. Vogt said all nine recalled that the plane plunged straight down, nose first.

Among the witnesses were two youngsters, who were taken aside by investigators after their mother brought them to a press briefing tent. The two had been at soccer practice at opposite ends of a playing field, about a half mile from where the plane fell. They said they had seen its fatal plunge.

“We heard the engine stuttering,” said Jason Moka, 10. “We saw fire from the engines. It was going pretty fast, and it made a big loud shaking. Everybody was running. It was big, low, and then it climbed and then went down. The wing went up. It went belly-up in the air and then nose down.”

His brother, Justin, 6, added: “It made a spiral, a very steady spiral.”

Their accounts matched those of the other witnesses in every respect except on the question of whether there was an engine fire and whether the plane climbed briefly before it fell. NTSB investigators, Vogt said, have found no evidence of either.

A source close to the NTSB said there were reports of an aircraft that was trailing the fatal plane by three miles. Its pilot and co-pilot might have seen the crash unfold, the source said, and also might be able to help investigators.

Several of the investigators slogged through the mud marking the spot where each piece of human remains was found. Vogt said the investigators, along with other workers and personnel from police and fire agencies wore special suits to protect them from biological hazards.

This, Vogt said, was “because of the possibility of blood-borne pathogens--AIDS or some other disease like that which could be transmitted by blood. Anytime you have bodies and dismemberment like this, you have that hazard.”

In addition to the bio-hazard suits, some of the workers wore yellow boots, face masks and rubber gloves sealed to their suit sleeves with duct tape. The workers lined up for tetanus and hepatitis shots. The crash site smelled like burned flesh, rubber and clothing.

About 50 rescue workers stayed at the scene throughout Thursday night listening for any sounds--moans or screams--that might indicate someone had lived through the tragedy.

They listened in vain.

As the rain began falling Friday morning, President Clinton telephoned Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey and Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy to offer condolences. Casey toured the site and said afterward: “The debris is everywhere. . . . Words cannot explain it. It is just a horrifying sight.”

Lt. Gov. Mark Singel declared: “The scene is one of absolute carnage. . . . There’s a great deal of material, human and otherwise, strewn about the area. Out of respect for the families, I won’t begin to describe what I saw there. But I’ve seen crash sites before, and this one is jarring.”

Casey and Singel met with reporters at a command center in the asphalt parking lot of Garden Green Plaza, a shopping mall on one side of the oak-studded hilltop where the wreckage was scattered. Twenty coroners rode by in the back of a yellow dump truck on their way to the crash site.

In time, the rain turned the site into glue. One dump truck sank into the muck and had to be hauled out with a winch. Workers reported wading through mud up to their knees. Some of them broke down in tears as they described what they had seen.

“I had four years in the Marine Corps, but this was like nothing I’ve seen in my entire life,” said Sgt. Rudy Prigorac, a policeman from Aliquippa. “There was no one I could identify as being a person. I was . . . searching the ground with a flashlight. I held it down, and I saw a small book.

“It was a child’s book, and it was open to a poem entitled ‘Weeping Willow.’ I knelt down, and I read the poem, and that’s when I broke down and started to cry.”

Chris Ciccone, 16, a high school junior from nearby Hopewell Township, Pa., was among several others who followed a firetruck to the scene.

“The only person I saw whole was a small kid. . . . It was just lying there on the ground, face down. It was about 5 or 6, but I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl because the clothes were too badly burned.”

Some of the rescue workers received counseling from medical experts to help them handle the trauma.

Part of the shock was the visual impact of the wreckage.

“There’s stuff hanging from trees--luggage, shoes and everything,” said James Albert, chairman of the Beaver County board of commissioners.

An in-flight magazine was intact.

So was a Reebok sneaker.

The largest piece of wreckage, part of the tail of the jet, was only 3 feet wide and 4 feet high.

Another part of the shock was realizing that the tragedy--as bad as it was--could have been worse.

Rescue workers pointed to a house standing not far from where the plane hit. Some of the wreckage was scattered in front of the house and across its driveway.

“They should go to church every day from now on,” Albert said about the people who live there. “That plane missed them by only 200 yards.”

Refrigerated trucks lined up at the crash site to carry away the pieces of human remains. At about 4 p.m., the first of the trucks drove to a temporary morgue at the Pittsburgh airport.

From the truck, the remains moved through at least five operations: fingerprinting, photography, materials, X-ray and a chalkboard for information about each individual. The identification process was expected to take as long as a week.

The Associated Press named only two Californians among the victims. It listed David Garber of Westminster and Walter Heiligenberg of Del Mar.

The crash brought renewed attention to USAir’s safety record. It was the fifth fatal USAir crash in five years.

In Washington, Fraser Jones, an FAA official familiar with aircraft maintenance, said USAir was put under increased surveillance in recent years because of its financial difficulties.

“This is standard procedure for us when an airline is having financial troubles, and the surveillance was further intensified after the Charlotte (N.C.) crash in July,” Jones said.

“But no safety issues have arisen as a result of the increased surveillance. There also appears to be no commonality between the latest crash and USAir’s past accidents over the last five years.”

A pilots’ union representative said there have been no complaints against USAir from any of its pilots.

In a Feb. 1, 1991, runway collision involving a USAir plane at Los Angeles International Airport, the NTSB cited “improper air traffic control procedures employed by the Los Angeles airport tower and the FAA’s failure to provide adequate policy direction and oversight of its air traffic control facility managers.”

“I just can’t see a thread through them (the different accidents),” said the pilot’s union representative, who requested anonymity. “There just doesn’t seem to be anything you can hang on USAir.”

Asked whether corners were being cut by USAir, he replied: “We don’t have any indication of that. The pilots would let us know if that was true.”

USAir spokeswoman Susan Young said the fatal jet underwent a routine maintenance check, performed every 35 flight hours, the day before it crashed. She said no problems were found.

Times staff writers Michael Ross in Pittsburgh, Alan C. Miller and Robert L. Jackson in Washington and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

* FINANCIAL BLOW: The crash worsens a bleak business outlook for USAir. D1