Gathering Storm Forces a Delay in Search, Recovery Operations

Deteriorating weather forced a temporary halt to search and recovery operations Tuesday as investigators pored over records to determine whether the plane’s thrust reversers might have been a factor in the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990.

The Boeing 767 plunged into the sea about 65 miles south of Nantucket Island early Sunday, killing all 217 on board. Radar data show that the plane was diving at, or close to, the speed of sound when it hit--much faster than it was designed to fly.

Navy officials said they were closer to pinpointing the spot on the ocean floor from which electronic “pings” have been emanating. The pings likely are being broadcast by the plane’s two “black boxes”--recording devices that could provide important information about the jetliner’s final moments of flight.

National Transportation Safety Board personnel said they were examining flight and maintenance records, attempting to determine whether the crash was in any way related to a preflight shutdown of a thrust reverser system on the plane or to earlier problems with the systems on two other Boeing 767s.

Coast Guard and Navy officers said that a storm approaching the New England coast Tuesday night had prompted them to order eight of the nine vessels deployed at the accident scene to head for port.

“Seas are 8 to 10 feet high and building,” said Coast Guard Capt. Russell Webster. “The conditions are worsening.”

Meteorologists said the storm is expected to last through Friday, with seas building to 15 feet and winds gusting close to 60 mph.

But Navy Capt. Jeff Graham said that, while the poor weather means about a three-day halt in the efforts to recover wreckage and human remains from Flight 990, it probably won’t have a crippling effect on the efforts to retrieve the jetliner’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

Graham said Navy and Coast Guard ships apparently have located the approximate position of the two devices, about 250 feet below the surface and roughly in the center of the area in which the floating debris recovered thus far has been found.

He said it will take about three days to refit the Navy salvage ship Grapple with the electronic equipment needed to find the exact location of the two recorders and to recover them. By that time, he said, the storm should be over and the work can progress.

Coast Guard cutters recovered more shattered debris and fragmented human remains from the surface of the sea Tuesday morning before the weather forced a halt to the operation.

Officials said they had found a large piece of debris Monday, but that piece, a cargo container, broke loose during recovery operations, tumbled back into the sea and sank.

Petty Officer R.J. Burns, a crewman aboard the Coast Guard cutter Chinook, said most of the debris and human remains that his ship had recovered are in small pieces.

Burns was stoic about most of what he saw but added: “When they pulled up little Disney roller-blades, that was pretty tough.

“I was thinking of the people and hoping it was quick,” Burns said. The petty officer said he was wondering “what they were thinking about for the last 30 seconds, and what their families must be going through.”

NTSB officials said Tuesday that one of the thrust reversers on the plane that crashed Sunday had been deactivated several days before the flight. They said it was “not uncommon” to fly with one reverser inoperative and that there were no problems with the flights made before the crash.

The fact that the reverser was shut down, they said, made it less likely that it had caused a problem in the seconds before the crash.

However, the officials said Tuesday night that they were “very interested” in studying the records on two earlier incidents involving the thrust reversers on Boeing 767s.

Thrust reversers are devices used to help slow an airplane after it has landed on a runway. They cause the plane’s engines, in effect, to work backward.

The first incident was the crash of a Lauda Airlines 767 into a jungle in Thailand in 1991. Investigators concluded that one of the plane’s two thrust reversers deployed accidentally while the jetliner was at 30,000 feet, disrupting the airflow over one wing and causing the jet to spiral into the ground.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered fixes after the crash to prevent the deployment of a thrust reverser while a plane is still in the air. These fixes had been made on the EgyptAir 767 that crashed Sunday, officials said.

The second incident occurred in May 1997 while a different EgyptAir 767 was on a flight from Tanzania to Cairo. Investigators said a worn auxiliary track on the plane’s right thrust reverser suddenly failed. They said a piece of the engine housing broke off, striking a wing and a cargo door before falling into the desert. The plane, which is still in service, landed in Cairo, was repaired and is now in service with Air Gabon.

Because of the 1997 incident, the Boeing company issued a service bulletin recommending that the auxiliary thrust reverser tracks on 767s and some other planes be inspected regularly for signs of wear.

Boeing said it was making the recommendation because, if another track failure caused a piece to break off from another airplane, that piece could puncture a fuselage with catastrophic results.

About two weeks ago, the FAA issued a proposal for a new rule requiring the redesign of the auxiliary tracks. If and when the rule is adopted, Boeing would have about four years to come up with a new design.

Despite the interest in the earlier problems, an NTSB source stressed Tuesday that, thus far, there is no evidence linking the thrust reversers to Sunday’s crash.