Swissair Data Recorder Failed Just Before Deadly Plunge

The on-board flight data recorder on Swissair Flight 111 stopped working just before the jetliner took its final, fatal dive into the Atlantic Ocean, air safety investigators disclosed Monday.

Vic Gerden, the chief investigator for the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, said the device, which records more than 100 aircraft indicators and systems, failed while the aircraft was at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, about six minutes before the MD-11 aircraft hit the water.

The failure appears to coincide with a cutoff of radio contact between the flight crew and air traffic controllers and with a breakdown in a radar transponder on the plane.

This signals a “strong possibility” of a major electrical failure on the plane, Gerden added. It also means that the cockpit voice recorder, a 30-minute tape of everything said on the flight deck, probably failed to record the flight’s final minutes. That device was found Monday.

Despite these setbacks, Gerden continued to express optimism that investigators will eventually determine what caused the crash, which killed all 229 people on board.

Even with the gap in the data recorder, investigators will be able to piece together the information provided by the device with radar records, recordings of the communication with air traffic controllers and other evidence from wreckage that continues to be dragged from the sea, Gerden said.

“Until we really assess all of it, it’s premature to reach conclusions; it’s unfair to reach conclusions,” he said. “. . . If we have flight data information down to 10,000 feet, we will have a lot of information. It will hopefully lead us to answers.”

The loss of electrical power on the jet would not in itself disable the aircraft and force the crash, Gerden said. In such an event, flight controls revert to a less sophisticated backup system, and the engines continue to function. While Gerden termed the airplane “flyable” in such a state, he declined to elaborate on what problems it would present to the pilot.

But Al Pregler, a retired airline pilot and former safety coordinator for the Airline Pilots Assn., said a sudden loss of electricity can wipe out key cockpit instruments and readouts and be very disorienting for the crew.

In the case of Flight 111, the problem could have been compounded by darkness, unfamiliar terrain and smoke in the cockpit, which the Swissair pilot reported.

“At night, without flight instruments, you really are going to be in deep, deep trouble,” Pregler said.

In addition, once the electrical system is lost, the pilot is unable to communicate with passengers because the intercom system has become useless. The pilot probably would also be unable to talk with the co-pilot in the next seat because both would be wearing oxygen masks, Pregler said.

The Geneva-bound plane crashed Wednesday night off the coast of Nova Scotia about 16 minutes after the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit and asked air traffic controllers in Moncton, New Brunswick, to clear him for an emergency landing at Halifax. Much of the wreckage rests in about 180 feet of water.

On Monday, Canadian navy divers exploring an underwater “debris field” found the cockpit voice recorder, the second of the two so-called “black boxes,” but heavy seas forced them to halt work before it was retrieved. Poor weather is forecast again for today, and navy officials said the divers are not expected to return to the water until Wednesday.

An underwater video camera also has found bodies of passengers in the debris field, officials confirmed, but they declined to say whether the remains are in the three large pieces of aircraft fuselage discovered by divers Sunday or to indicate whether they are more intact than the mostly partial remains recovered so far.

Navy spokesmen described the heroic efforts by two divers to recover the data recorder Sunday. The pair, tethered together while wearing self-contained deep-water suits usually used for undersea mine clearance, had to ascend to the surface very quickly after one of the suits developed a leak but still managed to retrieve the device, Capt. Phil Webster said.

As a result, they were stricken with decompression sickness, commonly called the bends, and had to be placed in a shipboard recompression chamber for several hours and briefly hospitalized. Navy officials said they would not identify the divers until they fully recovered.

Meanwhile, in Peggy’s Cove, the tiny fishing hamlet that is the town nearest to the crash site, residents were preparing to get back to life as usual, while admitting that it really won’t be “usual” for a long time, if ever.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is scheduled today to remove sentries who have been blocking most traffic into town. The Coast Guard helicopter pad is supposed to be relocated from the parking lot behind the Sou’Wester Restaurant and Gift Shop. Most of the TV satellite trucks will head out, and the army of journalists from around the world already had thinned out or moved across the peninsula to Halifax by Monday.

But many town residents said the village is inevitably changed.

“When the people who live here look out at the sea, they’ll think of the plane; when the fishermen go out, they’ll think of it,” said Jean Ellis, a clerk at the Sou’Wester. “It will not diminish the beauty, but this place will never be the same. I know when I come to work, I’ll remember the crash.”

On Monday, the lighthouse and the rocks surrounding it continued to be a place to honor the dead. Some relatives and friends of the victims arrived or returned to leave flowers or stare out to sea.

Times staff writer Nora Zamichow in Los Angeles contributed to this report.