Tail Malfunction Reported on Plane

Investigators looking for the cause of a commuter plane crash said Thursday that a tail assembly adjusted two days earlier was moving erratically during the 37 seconds the doomed flight was in the air.

The up-and-down motion began after the plane underwent routine maintenance Monday night and showed up during all seven flights before Wednesday’s crash, said John Goglia, a National Transportation Safety Board member.

The flight data recorder pulled from the smoldering wreckage confirmed that the erratic movement was also present just before the crash that killed 21 people.

A team of safety-board investigators was sent to the Raytheon Aerospace facility in Ceredo, W.Va., where the maintenance was done.

The Federal Aviation Administration also told Air Midwest officials to check more than 40 planes that may have been serviced at the facility. Air Midwest, a commuter airline of the Mesa Group, operates as US Airways Express in some areas.

“It’s pretty clear that Air Midwest needs to take immediate action,” FAA spokesman Greg Martin said.

US Airways Express Flight 5481 crashed in flames moments after leaving the Charlotte airport, killing the 19 passengers and two crew members aboard. Capt. Katie Leslie reported an emergency to the tower, but the FAA said the transmission was cut off before she could identify the problem.

Information from the flight data recorder shows the plane took off with its nose up 7 degrees, which is normal. But the pitch increased sharply, to 52 degrees, by the time the plane reached 1,200 feet. The plane soon rolled to the right and headed toward the ground. “Something occurred to drive that pitch angle to 52 degrees,” Goglia said. “That is abnormal.”

The data recorder also shows the elevator control on the tail of the Beech 1900 “moving up and down a lot” on all the flights it took after the maintenance work, Goglia said.

Elevators are flaps that swing up and down from the rear of a plane’s horizontal tail stabilizer, increasing or decreasing pitch. In the case of Flight 5481, Goglia said the maintenance workers replaced a tab that controls movement of the elevator and adjusted the tension of the cable controlling the tab.

The erratic motion may not have affected earlier flights if the plane was not loaded to capacity, and there were no reports of problems from Tuesday’s flights, Goglia said. But the twin-engine turboprop was at nearly full weight when it took off from Charlotte for Greer, S.C.