Piece of Alaska Jet Fell Before Crash - Post

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Radar data show what may be a piece of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 falling about 4 miles southeast of where the plane plunged into the Pacific Ocean, killing all 88 people on board, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, quoting sources close to the investigation.

The Post said there was no information on what the piece might be or whether it could explain why the airliner crashed last week.

But it said a preliminary analysis showed an object on radar without the usual markings of an aircraft that appeared to move with the prevailing winds as it fell. That suggested the object may have been part of an aerodynamic surface such as a wing or tail section, according to the Post report.

If the radar data are correct, National Transportation Safety Board investigators will have to consider whether some part of the tail fell off and caused the plane to fall into the Pacific Ocean because of too much stress on the tail surface or because of a defect or corrosion, the Post said.

It said investigators did know that the aircraft had not been checked for possible corroded bolts in the tail section. The Federal Aviation Administration has required such inspections, but gave airlines 18 months to accomplish the inspections.

Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83 model, crashed on Jan. 31 on a flight from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to San Francisco and Seattle.

The crew reported problems with the plane's horizontal stabilizer, the wing-like structure at the top of the tail that keeps the plane in steady flight and assists in up and down movements.

None of the 83 passengers and five crew survived the deadly plunge from 17,000 feet, which ended in the Pacific 7.5 miles off Point Mugu, a promontory jutting into the ocean about 60 miles north of Los Angeles.

Investigators and other pilots are reluctant to second-guess a pilot involved in a crash. But a number of them have questioned whether Flight 261's pilot should have spent so much time attempting to trouble-shoot a problem rather than simply land as quickly as possible, the Post wrote. The crew bypassed several airports between San Diego and Los Angeles as it tried to correct the stabilizer problem, it noted.

Boeing Co., the manufacturer of the MD-83, issued recommendations on Monday, instructing any pilot with a stabilizer problem to complete the flight crew operating manual checklist but to forego additional trouble-shooting if that did not work.

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