"Get Up! Get Up!"

By Gordon Bock

Nothing about the setting even hinted of disaster. The morning sky was warm and hazy over Dallas-Fort Worth International, an airport that many pilots consider the safest in the U.S. But as Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 lifted off last Wednesday for an 8:31 flight to Salt Lake City, the 108 passengers and crew members sensed trouble immediately. The plane was only about 30 ft. above the runway when three backfiring noises erupted, followed by a burst of flames from the left engine and a sudden stall. Horrified passengers on a commuter plane sitting on a nearby runway saw the sinking plane. "Get up! Get up!" some shouted.

But the plane could not. Hurtling at 164 m.p.h., the Boeing 727 jet hit the ground on its right wing, snapped open in two places, skidded for 1,000 ft. and finally stopped in a field of knee-high weeds. Flaming jet fuel splattered inside the shattered fuselage, igniting carpets, paneling and seat covers that gave off lethal gases as they burned.

Thirteen people died, including two flight attendants and a 14-month-old girl who perished with her parents. Astonishingly, 95 survived, some by climbing through a charred hole in the roof, others by clambering through emergency exits and across the burning wings. Fire fighters arrived within four minutes of the crash and managed to douse the fire with foam in another six minutes.

The day was a deadly one for commercial aviation. A twin-engine commuter plane crashed in heavy rains in Mexico's Sierra Madre; none of the 21 people aboard survived. In Hong Kong a downpour was also blamed when a Chinese government-owned CAAC jetliner skidded while landing, then plunged into Victoria Harbor. Seven people were killed.

The Delta accident stunned aviation experts because for the second time in three years a much admired airline and a state-of-the-art airport were involved. In 1985 a Delta L-1011 crashed on landing at Dallas-Fort Worth, killing 137 people. That mishap, however, occurred during a thunderstorm and was eventually attributed to the severe up- and downdrafts known as wind shear.

This time investigators suspect engine failure. Cockpit tape recordings show that the crew was talking about such trouble moments before impact. One hypothesis is that the left engine stalled out, though the plane should have been able to take off with its remaining two. Another is that spinning wheels and blades of one of the jet's turbines blew apart, sending shrapnel flying into a second engine and making takeoff impossible. The Delta jet was powered by three Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines; some models in the series were targeted by the Government for mandatory inspections and repairs in 1985, after failures were blamed for two major air crashes. Finding the precise cause could take months, but investigators will have an advantage because Flight 1141's black-box data recorder was recovered and the entire cockpit crew survived.

With reporting by Lianne Hart/Dallas and Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta