Alaska Crash Search Turns Up Only Debris

By Dan Whitcomb

PORT HUENEME, Calif. (Reuters) - Hope turned to despair in the seas off southern California on Tuesday as the search for 88 people on board a crashed Alaska Airline flight turned up only wreckage and body parts.

But Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thomas Collins said pings from one or both of the MD-83 flight data recorders -- a crucial element in finding the cause of a plane crash -- had been detected.

The ``black boxes'' have yet to be recovered from the plane's fuselage thought to be lying 700 feet under the waves.

Eighteen hours after Flight 261 nose-dived into the Pacific Ocean after signaling a problem with the aircraft's stabilizers, rescuers were still scouring the deep waters for possible survivors.

Only four bodies -- those of two women, a man and a child -- and 12 boxes of debris had been recovered. The shattered aircraft seats, personal belongings and twisted metal that littered the surface on Monday evening had either been swallowed by the waves or picked up on a flotilla of small boats and Coast Guard vessels after a night-long search.

``They've found things like a bible, a child's teddy bear, a wallet, personal things. These things are important to families of the victims,'' said a spokesman for the Salvation Army at the makeshift rescue center in Port Hueneme, north of the celebrity beach city of Malibu.

Relatives of those lost were overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness. The passenger list released by Alaska showed families of four or five members, some of them children, had been wiped out.

A tall wooden cross strewn with roses was set up on the beach overlooking the crash site under a bright blue California sky belying the toll of human misery.

The sister of one woman who died on the flight from the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco and Seattle collapsed in grief on the sand before the makeshift memorial.

President Clinton said the crash was a ``terrible, tragic thing.''

Flight 261 was half-filled with 88 passengers and crew when the pilot radioed that he was having trouble with the stabilizers that keep the plane flying level.

The pilot asked for permission to make an emergency stop in Los Angeles just minutes before the plane plunged 17,000 feet into the ocean.

It was the second air disaster in two days. A Kenya Airways Airbus en route to Nairobi via Lagos crashed into the sea off Ivory Coast on Sunday minutes after taking off from Abidjan airport. Some 169 people were feared dead and 10 were rescued from the water.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board started an inquiry into the accident -- the first fatal accident involving an Alaska Airlines plane for 25 years.

Aviation experts suggested that the problem with the stabilizer may have been a symptom of more complex troubles.

``There has really been nothing in the history of the airplane that would indicate it would be susceptible to this kind of (stabilizer) problem,'' said David Stempler, Air Travelers Association president and publisher of the Airline Accident Report Card.

Alaska Airlines officials fended off media reports suggesting a connection between the crash and a year long investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration of its aircraft maintenance procedures.

Spokesman Jack Evans said the inquiry was related to record keeping rather than safety issues and the allegations involved two specific MD-80 planes. The aircraft that crashed was a longer distance MD-83 version and was built in 1992. Aviation experts said the MD-80 accident rate is 0.41 accidents per 1 million departures, which is less than one-quarter the industry average for all airplanes.

``We see absolutely no connection. There is no question in my mind that this has anything to do with Monday's accident,'' Evans told Reuters.

Alaska Airlines Chief Executive John Kelly said the airline had an ``impeccable safety record and a maintenance record that I would hold up to the industry.''

Among the passengers on board were seven employees of Alaska Airlines and a partner airline, Horizon, who were flying for free on a standby basis, along with 25 friends or family members of those employees or the crew, Alaska Airlines said.

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