Jamaica Plane Crash Probe, Everyone Survived, What Happened?

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"Panic" As Jet Overshoots Runway In Jamaica




Passengers on American Airlines Flight 331 had endured the crowded airports and delays of holiday travel, and were moments from their Caribbean destination. Suddenly, everything seemed to spin out of control.

Touching down Tuesday night in a fierce rain, the Boeing 737-800 slammed into the runway of Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport. The aircraft skidded to a halt at the edge of the sea, leaving battered and bruised passengers screaming in panic as the smell of jet fuel spread through the darkened cabin, which had cracked open in places.

"I just wanted to get the hell out of there, as far as I could, because I could smell the fumes, and I knew that if it blew, it could be a pretty big fireball," said Gary Wehrwein, 67, who was traveling with his wife, Pilar Abaurrea, from Keene, New Hampshire.

All 154 people aboard survived, with 92 taken to hospitals and 13 admitted, but none of the injuries was considered to be life-threatening, said Jamaican Information Minister Daryl Vaz. One woman had surgery for a broken nose and cuts to her face.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said 76 of the passengers were Americans.

"It would have gone into the Sea"

The plane came to a stop on the sandy edge of an airport access road, and Transport Minister Mike Henry described it as a "Christmas miracle."

"If the plane was going faster, it would have gone into the sea," Henry said.

In daylight Wednesday, as soldiers stood around the wrecked jet, the damage was clear: The fuselage was cracked open, its left main landing gear had collapsed, and its nose was crushed and pointing off toward the sea.

Members of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board were assisting an investigation led by Jamaica's government, but there was no immediate explanation for what caused the plane to overshoot the runway. The "black box" flight data recorder from the plane was retrieved and will be taken to the NTSB laboratory in Washington.

Some aviation experts speculated the pilot was descending too fast for the conditions.

Investigators were expected to analyze, among other things, whether the plane should have been landing in such bad weather, said American spokesman Tim Smith in Fort Worth, Texas, although he added that other planes had landed safely in the heavy rain.

"At this point, it's now going to be in the hands of the NTSB and the FAA, plus any Jamaican government authorities that may be involved, and to start and sort of backtrack and see what happened and how it can be prevented from happening again," Smith said.

Sam Mayer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots at American Airlines, said the pilot and first officer were "pretty beat up" but were released after being treated for injuries. The pair had already flown from Miami to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and back before the Jamaica flight, he said.

Many Passengers traveling home

For the passengers, the most startling thing of all seemed to be how a bumpy but otherwise ordinary trip descended so quickly into chaos.

Flight 331 took off from Miami International Airport at 8:52 p.m. — about an hour late — and arrived at Norman Manley International Airport at 10:22 p.m. It originated at Reagan National Airport in Washington.

The jet had a crew of six and 148 passengers, many of them Jamaicans coming home for Christmas, officials said.

Passengers said the in-flight turbulence forced the crew to halt the beverage service three times before finally giving up.

Before descending, the pilot warned of more turbulence but said it likely wouldn't be much worse, Abaurrea told The Associated Press.

"All of a sudden, when it hit the ground, the plane was kind of bouncing. Someone said the plane was skidding and there was panic," she said.

No time for Fear

Wehrwein said there was no time to feel afraid. Immediately after impact, he was hit in the back by a panel that fell from the interior ceiling and then the jet came to an abrupt halt, he recalled.

"I wasn't thinking I was going to die. I said, 'Oh my God, we crashed,' then I got hit," Wehrwein said.

He and his wife recalled a hissing sound in the darkness, perhaps from the release of oxygen, people crying out and the smell of fumes, and a mad scramble to get out of the rear emergency exit with the help of the shouting flight crew.

"To me, it's a miracle to be alive," Wehrwein said. "So, I'm just grateful for that."

Passenger Paul Williamson, visiting his native Jamaica from his home in Toronto, said he was frightened when he noticed the plane's wheels didn't seem to touch down right away. He said he crouched into a crash position in his seat near the front of the plane.

"Next thing I know, I hear a crashing sound, then the sound of twisting metal. It all happened so fast, but when the plane came to rest, that's when the screaming and the carrying on started," Williamson, a 37-year-old opera singer, told the AP.



"Everything was Black"

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Passenger Natalie Morales Hendricks told NBC's "Today" the plane began to skid and "before I knew it, everything was black and we were crashing."

"Everybody's overhead baggage started to fall. Literally, it was like being in a car accident. People were screaming, I was screaming," she said.

"There was smoke and debris everywhere," after the plane halted, she said.

Williamson praised the flight crew for ably assisting the passengers. "It really could have been much, much worse," he said.

Wehrwein remembers coming out to sheets of torrential, "hurricane-type" rain as they walked along the sand to a bus to take them to the terminal, where they encountered airport staff unprepared to handle the situation.

Dazed passengers waited an hour before straggling out of the airport, many with bruises and cuts.

"It was chaos. Nobody knew what to do with us," Wehrwein said by phone from his stepson's home in Kingston.

The couple said they were relieved to escape with just some soreness and that no one was killed. "I'm a little bit shook up but OK," Abaurrea said.

Henry defended the response of the airport staff, saying the emergency services acted professionally and in accordance with international guidelines by getting to the scene and tending to the injured in 5 1/2 minutes. He said nine ambulances responded and were able to get the injured to hospital in due time.

While flights have resumed from the airport, bigger carriers such as Virgin and British Airways will be diverted to the Donald Sangster airport in Montego Bay. He said everything should be back to normal by Thursday.



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Early NTSB Test Results Reveal Circuit On Track Near Crash Site Didn't Work...Lawsuits Filed

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WASHINGTON - Investigators say a signaling system failed to detect a stopped commuter train during tests of the track where a deadly crash occurred this week in Washington, D.C.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that the train control system lost detection of a test train that was stopped in the same place as the train that was struck on Monday.

The NTSB also says the operator of the struck train was interviewed Thursday. He told investigators that his train was running in manual mode at the time of the crash. The operator says he was waiting for another train to clear when he felt a hard push to his train from behind.

Investigators say they are still examining the crash site to understand how the train control system functioned on Monday.

The Washington-area mass transit system will inspect every stretch of its tracks as federal investigators work to determine whether problems found with a signaling system in one area could have contributed to this week's crash that killed nine people.

Metro General Manager John Catoe also said Thursday the agency will start rearranging its trains to put the oldest and structurally weakest rail cars in the middle, instead of at the ends, where they are more vulnerable.

Catoe said he ordered inspections of all 3,000 circuits, or sections beneath the track that include a signaling system. The signals provide critical information to passing trains such as when to stop or slow down. Tests by the National Transportation Safety Board indicated a problem with one of the circuits in the area of Monday's crash.

Circuits are vital:

"Whether trains are operated in automatic or manual, these circuits are vital," said Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "We're particularly interested in the speed commands that might be sent from that circuit when there's a train standing on that circuit."

Investigators were planning to test the track with a six-car train.

An engineering professor who's studied transportation safety said that if sensors failed on the track, it could have contributed to Monday's crash. He emphasized, though, that catastrophic crashes usually can't be blamed on a single factor.

"If the sensors didn't work properly, it deprived (the train operator) of very vital information," said Najm Meshkati, professor of engineering at the University of Southern California. The operator, he said, "was the last layer of defense."

Since the crash, the NTSB has also criticized Metro for failing to revamp or replace its 1000-series rail cars after previous warnings by the agency. The striking train, which sustained most of the damage in Monday's crash, was made up of those cars, which date back to the 1970s. The cars are not as good at withstanding crashes as later models.

Catoe insisted Thursday that the cars were safe, but said the agency was in the process of putting the 1000-series cars in the middle of trains, and not on the ends, as an added precaution. Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said later it would not be possible to make that change in every case, but the agency will do it where they can.

The union representing Metro workers demanded that change on Wednesday.

Metro on Thursday reopened the two stations that had been closed since the crash, but only for rush hour. Trains were running along just one track, leaving the side damaged in the crash closed as the investigation continues.

Family seeks $950,000 in lawsuit:

A Washington couple who say their 15-year-old son was injured in the crash filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday against Metro, which is formally known as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

In the lawsuit, Imhotep Yakub and Dawn Flanagan say their son, Davonne Flanagan, was a passenger in the striking train. They say he fractured his femur and suffered other injuries. The family is seeking $950,000 in damages.

The deadliest crash in the rail system's 33-year history occurred when a train plowed into another that was stopped. The moving train was operating in automatic mode, which means it was primarily controlled by a computer, although there is evidence the operator applied the emergency brake.

Since the crash, trains have been manually controlled as a precaution against computer problems. Catoe said trains will continue running manually until all the circuits are inspected and the agency is "100 percent sure the system is in 100 percent working condition."

Hersman said inspectors found 300 feet to 400 feet of rails that showed signs of emergency braking. Hersman also has said the emergency brake control on the moving train was found pushed down, though it's not clear how or when that happened. The operator of the oncoming train was among the dead.

Hersman said investigators hoped to interview the operator of the other train on Thursday, a day after his release from the hospital.

NTSB officials say their investigations can take more than a year.


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