Loud Noise Recorded Before Crash

By CHRISTINE HANLEY Associated Press Writer

PORT HUENEME, Calif. (AP) - The cockpit recorder aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 261 captured a loud noise just before the MD-83 went out of control and plunged into the ocean, a federal investigator said Friday.

The noise was one of two captured by the cockpit voice recorder, said John Hammerschmidt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The tape revealed new details of what occurred on the flight in its last minutes as the pilots struggled to control a problem with the horizontal stabilizer - a part of the tail that controls the plane's pitch.

About 12 minutes before the end of the recording the plane experienced an apparent loss of vertical control, Hammerschmidt said.

The crew recovered control in about 11/2 minutes and then a flight attendent advised the pilots that she had heard a loud noise from the rear of the jet.

``Slightly more than one minute before the end of the recording, a loud noise can be heard on the recording and the airplane appears to go out of control,'' he said. ``No stall warning was heard during this event.''

Hammerschmidt said the investigation was progressing rapidly, including work by a Navy vessel using side-scan sonar to map debris in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Sonar appeared to show the debris in a single concentration within an area the size of a football field, and the survey was continuing one mile out in each direction, he said.

A section of fuselage estimated to be 10 feet long was found, as well as a 5-foot section of the leading edge of the horizontal stablizer and a piece of the skin of the vertical stabilizer, Hammerschmidt said.

Ten miles off Port Hueneme, a ship steamed back and forth over the debris field, towing a sonar device through the water to create an image of the bottom detailed enough to distinguish parts of the jetliner from rocks and other natural features.

The task - sailors call it ``mowing the lawn'' - had been expected to take two to three days, but Hammerschmidt said it would likely be completed Friday.

After that, remote-operated vehicles like the one that salvaged the plane's ``black box'' flight recorders will be sent down to take video images and eventually help retrieve bodies and wreckage.

``You can't do it overnight,'' said Navy Capt. Terry Labrecque. ``You have to be methodical.''

The plane nose-dived into the ocean 10 miles offshore Monday, killing 88 people. It was en route from the Mexican vacation spot of Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco and Seattle.

The NTSB has described cockpit conversations and other information suggesting Flight 261's pilots were fighting to control a problem with the aircraft's horizontal stabilizer, the wide part of the tail that keeps a plane flying level.

According to radio transmissions and eyewitness reports from other commercial pilots in the area, the plane turned upside down or ``corkscrewed'' into the water following a series of increasingly desperate maneuvers that lasted at least half an hour.

Also Friday, relatives of victims - many of whom worked for or were connected with Alaska Airlines - were preparing for another private memorial, set for Saturday in the Pepperdine University chapel overlooking the ocean in Malibu. On Sunday, the Coast Guard planned to drop flowers from that service over the crash site.

Fifteen members of various bands of American Indians gathered on marshland near Point Mugu on Friday for a ceremony in honor of victim Morris Thompson and his family.

A prominent Native American leader in Alaska and former commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Thompson, 61, his wife, Thelma, and daughter Sheryl were killed in the crash.

The Indians burned sage to cleanse their spirits; passed a pipe, which is a symbol of life; took turns leading tribal chants; then turned east, west, south and north, some pointing feathers to the sky, to honor the four directions.

Only four bodies have been recovered. Relatives waited for word on further efforts to bring back remains.

The wreckage lies in an underwater canyon beneath the Santa Barbara Channel, where depths range from 90 feet at the edges to 700 feet.

A remote-operated underwater vehicle called Scorpio 1 explored a small part of the debris field after bringing up the second flight recorder Thursday, and sent up video images of the plane's tail.

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