Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992 TAG: 9203240220
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT DVORCHAK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Instead, the plane barely made it to the end of La Guardia Airport's 7,000-foot runway - one of the shortest in the country at a major airport - before it crashed in a ball of fire into the frigid, dark waters of Flushing Bay.
On Monday, a federal official said a quick evaluation of the cockpit voice recorder had yielded no clues on the Sunday night crash that killed 27 people.
John Lauber, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference that investigators had listened to the recorder, one of two retrieved from the wreckage. "At this point there's nothing that leaps out."
He said officials were trying to learn whether ice had built up on the plane's wings.
The last body was pulled from the wreckage by divers late Monday.
Majure was among the dead. He had 8,000 hours of flying, including two years as captain of the Fokker F-28 Model 4000. His co-pilot, John Rachuba, with 3,500 hours of flight experience, was fished alive from the plane after part of it submerged.
Flight attendant Debra Taylor survived with a broken leg. Her colleague, Janice King, was killed.
Such is the fickle nature of disaster.
One of the survivors was a soap opera actor, Richard Lawson, who plays the character Lucas Barnes on ABC's "All My Children."
"A terrible tragedy," said USAir president Seth Schofield of doomed Flight 405.
Sunday, a spring storm was leaving patches of snow on runway 13-31. It was a bit foggy. The temperature was 31 degrees; visibility was three-quarters of a mile.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based flight crew was coming off a 16-hour rest when it flew from the Raleigh, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., via Charlotte. From there it was on to New York, to continue to Cleveland.
Flight 405 was 40 minutes late leaving Florida and it landed 66 minutes behind in New York.
Five people were going on from Florida to Cleveland. Forty-two new ticket holders walked down the La Guardia gangway to their red, white and blue seats.
Among those were Thoral and Virginia Mitchell of Cleveland, who had tried to outflank congestion at their scheduled departure point in Westchester, north of New York, by rescheduling from La Guardia.
Ticket agents balked at letting them change plans, but Virginia Mitchell was a lawyer. She argued until she and her husband got coach seats on Flight 405. They did not survive.
While the plane waited at its gate, it was de-iced twice with a brew of glycol and water, at 8:29 and again at 8:59, Schofield said.
Majure, in a reassuring voice before departure, comforted the passengers by saying he asked for a second shot of de-icing just to be on the safe side, passengers said.
The plane waited nearly 30 minutes to be cleared for takeoff.
When Majure pushed the throttle, it rolled down the runway. Passengers said it struggled a few feet off the tarmac, then tilted to the left and slammed back down. Momentum drove it over a 10-foot embankment designed to hold back high tides. The nose, one wing and an engine were sheared off and scattered on the ground.
"I was floating in the water because the seats float. I opened my eyes but there was no plane over me. I was next to it," said a 23-year-old woman from Solon, Ohio, who identified herself only by the name Laura.
The woman said she didn't know how she got away so easily. "I don't know how. It's a miracle. I have a guardian angel on my shoulder or something."
Before the plane went into the water, a fireball engulfed most of the wreckage in flames.
Air controllers noticed a flash through the falling snow. One of them picked up the hot line to the Port Authority police and said, "4-4 alert on Runway 31." That's the police code for a crash.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB