Word: ntsb
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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...
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...
...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...
Pollock said the black box and cockpit voice recorder from the McDonnell Douglas MD-80, an updated version of the DC-9, had been recovered and were sent to Washington for analysis in NTSB laboratories. It would be 60 days before a transcript is released, he said...
...yesterday afternoon, workers were recovering bodies and beginning to map the location of each large piece of the wreckage of Flight 255, said John Lauber, an NTSB board member...