Sifting Through the Wreckage

By Richard Stengel

Carcasses of smoking metal, charred suitcases, melted serving carts and bodies draped with bright yellow tarpaulins dotted the deserted highway. For the investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), this nightmarish landscape was not only a grisly tableau of tragedy but also a field of evidence offering myriad clues. Their task, which began last week and may not end for months, was to solve the mystery of Northwest Airlines Flight 255. Why had the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 bound for Phoenix from Detroit's Metropolitan Airport, plunged to earth only seconds after takeoff, killing 154 passengers and crew members on the plane, sparing only four-year- old Cecilia Cichan?

Throughout the summer, anxiety about an air disaster climbed along with the temperature. The skies were judged to be particularly crowded; reports multiplied of near collisions, of overworked air-traffic controllers, of indifferent maintenance. Yet the crash of Flight 255 ended a remarkable two- year stretch without a single fatal accident involving a major domestic carrier. Moreover, 255's demise may have had less to do with unfriendly skies than with the eternal variable of human fallibility. Preliminary reports suggested that the pilot may have failed to take a routine, essential step: extend the wing flaps and slats that provide the jet with extra lift for takeoff.

At 8:45 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 16, the radio tower at Metropolitan Airport cleared Flight 255 for departure. Captain John R. Maus, 57, a veteran pilot with 20,000 hours of flight experience, 2,000 of them in MD-80s, taxied the plane onto runway 3-Center North. The plane, loaded with a full 39,128 lbs. of jet fuel and 6,000 lbs. of baggage, hurtled farther than normal down the runway and rose less than 50 feet before plunging. In the cockpit, a computer- generated voice repeated the words "stall . . . stall," indicating that the airflow over the wings was no longer sufficient to lift the plane; the jet was falling, not flying. Traveling at about 215 m.p.h., the plane knocked a jagged piece off the roof of a rental-car building and then ricocheted off the embankment of an access road to Interstate 94. Flight 255 disintegrated into chunks of fiery metal, smashing three cars and killing at least three more people, the cars' drivers.

Within four hours, a group of 13 NTSB investigators -- known as a "go team" -- left for Detroit from Washington. The NTSB, an independent federal agency, is responsible for investigating all U.S. civil aviation accidents and making recommendations for transportation safety. By dawn the team members were sifting through the wreckage, a painstaking, hands-on activity they call "kicking tin." The investigators, who include electrical engineers, pilots, and engine and airframe mechanics, then formed "working groups." These groups pore over possible factors in the crash: the jet's engines and systems, the quality of air-traffic control, the weather, and the emotional and medical states of the people involved.

A swirl of speculation quickly surrounded the crash. The day afterward, some witnesses reported having seen flames trailing from one of the plane's two engines. That possibility was discounted when the NTSB announced that the engines revealed no evidence of fire or early disintegration. Wind shear was also deemed a possible culprit. Abrupt wind shifts were responsible for the last major crash of a U.S. carrier, a Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 jet in Dallas on Aug. 2, 1985. In Detroit, Flight 255 had been rerouted to another runway to avoid a gust of wind from a distant thunderstorm. Still another hypothesis concerned the baggage loading: investigators examined the possibility that too much cargo may have been placed toward the rear of the aircraft, tipping the center of gravity aft and causing the plane to go out of control.

But attention soon shifted to the wing flaps. The clue came from the plane's sophisticated flight-data recorder, the so-called black box (it is actually bright orange, for easy spotting) that monitors everything from airspeed to brake temperatures. It showed no indication that the pilot had extended the flaps. Nor did conversation between the pilots in the cockpit include a mention of the flaps during the preflight verbal checklist.

Such an oversight is almost unthinkable: a takeoff without extending the flaps, said Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Spokesman John Leyden, is like driving off in a car without closing the door -- and far more dangerous. Yet such a lapse, notes University of Michigan Aeronautic Engineer C. William Kauffman, "would explain some of the things that were observed -- the aircraft using a lot of runway, not climbing very high, stalling."

But blaming the flaps may be premature. The plane's computerized warning system never alerted the crew that the flaps were not extended. At week's end a co-pilot of a nearby Northwest jet who said he observed Flight 255's ill- fated takeoff insisted that the slats and flaps on the plane were in the correct position.

Any finding at this early stage can only be tentative. The real work of the NTSB investigators is not on-site but in the lab. Investigators hope a study of the wings and of the actuators, hydraulic pistons on the wings, will conclusively show where the flaps were.

The ultimate determination of a "probable cause" is made by the full NTSB after a public meeting that may not be held for nine to twelve months. Whatever the cause of the Detroit disaster, the doubts and conflicting reports are unnerving for airline passengers and officials alike. Notes newly appointed FAA Administrator T. Allan McArtor: "You work so hard to build into your system safety margins, procedures, mechanisms to deal with the human frailty. When these break down, it just stuns you."

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin/Washington and B. Russell Leavitt/Detroit