Landing Called Possible Even on 1 Engine : Crash: Veteran pilots say American Eagle crew probably could have continued safe descent. One says there may have been cockpit indecision.

Barring unexplained circumstances, the cockpit crew of an ill-fated American Eagle commuter plane probably should have been able to land safely after one of the plane’s two engines failed, veteran pilots said Thursday.

The British-built Jetstream Super 31 apparently was about 1,000 feet above the ground Tuesday evening, descending for a landing at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, when the crew started talking about an engine “flameout,” according to a cockpit recording recovered by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Seconds later, after the crew discussed the possibility of aborting the landing and going around for a second attempt, Flight 3379 crashed belly-down into a wooded area about four miles southwest of the airport, killing 15 of the 20 on board.

The plane is designed to fly and land on one engine, and much of the regular retraining that the cockpit crew of multi-engine planes must undergo--either in flight simulators or in actual aircraft--centers around what to do in the case of engine failure, according to several turboprop pilots who asked not to be identified.

“But it sounds like there may have been some indecision in that cockpit,” one of the pilots said.

“Any discussion about going around after a power failure is chancy,” said another pilot. “There’s absolutely no reason I can see that they would not have continued on in for a landing.”

Federal records show that at least seven other Jetstream Super 31s have landed safely after losing power in one of the engines.

While descending toward a runway for a landing, as American Eagle Flight 3379 was doing, relatively little power is needed to keep a plane on its intended flight path, aviation sources said.

And although the failure of one engine gives the plane asymmetrical thrust, that problem can be corrected by use of the rudder and by feathering the propeller on the failed engine. The Super 31 has an automatic feathering mechanism.

When a turboprop engine fails, the whirling propeller provides a sort of resistance, or drag. To reduce this drag, the propeller blades are twisted, or “feathered,” so their edges are parallel to the air flow.

One of the pilots analyzing the crash said the sort of flameout discussed by the cockpit crew is “very unusual” for turboprop engines, which are generally known for their reliability.

On a turboprop plane, a jet engine spins a turbine that is attached to a propeller. A “flameout” is said to occur when the fire in the jet engine goes out. In the case of Flight 3379, kerosene soaked the crash site, so it is believed that the plane did not run out of fuel.

The NTSB said it still hasn’t determined which engine on Flight 3379 may have failed, but the plane’s turn to the left before it crashed suggests that it may have been the left engine.

American Eagle said Thursday that a cockpit crew had trouble starting that engine earlier on the day of the crash, but the airline said that difficulty would not have been related to any subsequent problems in flight.

The crash site was a subdued scene of tragic devastation on Thursday as the investigation to determine the official cause of the crash continued.

The three main chunks of wreckage extended in a line beyond the swath cut through a stand of trees as the plane descended.

“It was an awesome thing to see,” said Chris Sullivan, who was one of four members of the news media allowed access to the site. “You can judge the terror. . . . It’s hard to see how anyone could have gotten out alive.”