33 Died in L.A. Airport Collision, Officials Say : Crash: Identification of bodies to begin. Controller who directed flight and her supervisor are reassigned.

Twenty bodies were pulled Sunday from the tangled wreckage of Friday’s collision of a USAir jetliner and a SkyWest commuter, while investigators pieced together the sequence of events that led to the fiery crash in which officials said 33 people were killed.

The collision at Los Angeles International Airport occurred when an air traffic controller gave permission to the jetliner, with 89 people aboard, to land on the same runway where she had just directed the commuter plane to await takeoff, federal investigators say.

Aviation experts said Sunday it was unlikely that the USAir pilot, who was killed in the crash, could have seen the commuter plane because most of the smaller plane’s lights were off.

All 12 people aboard the commuter were killed instantly when it was rear-ended and crushed by the jetliner. The toll of USAir passengers confirmed dead has climbed steadily.

Bodies were recovered Sunday in a slow, tedious search through the wreckage. All were believed to have been from the USAir flight, according to federal authorities in charge of investigating the crash.

“I believe if the removal of the remains is not completed now, it is virtually so,” Jim Burnett, an official with the National Transportation Safety Board, said Sunday evening.

Throughout the day, emergency crews using a crane and non-sparking cutting tools dissected the twisted metal to clear the way for Los Angeles County coroner’s officials to find and document bodies, their personal belongings and other means of identification like jewelry or purses.

“It was devastating to see the destruction, particularly the plane underneath,” said Ilona Lewis, chief deputy coroner supervising the body removal. The wreckage represented “one big mangled mess,” she said.

The coroner’s office, which has been inundated with telephone calls during the last two days from frantic relatives, warned it will take weeks to identify the bodies, many of which were burned beyond recognition.

“This latest five (recovered Sunday afternoon) were severely charred,” coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said.

By Sunday, medical examiners had received or were about to receive dental X-rays and other records for 95% of the victims, Dambacher said.

The body retrieval had been delayed while crews awaited delivery of a crane and while several thousand pounds of potentially explosive jet fuel was drained from the jetliner.

The bustle of LAX terminals was normal Sunday--the crash did not seem to be a topic of many discussions, and the wreckage could not be seen from any passenger waiting area.

But Tom Winfrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Airports, said flight delays of up to two hours were reported Sunday because the closure of the northside runways, which will have to be repaired and cleaned up before they can be reopened. Airliners were being diverted to runways on the south side of LAX.

“It has diminished our capacity pretty significantly,” Winfrey said. He said travelers planning to use LAX should check with their airlines for possible flight delays.

While the crash may not have been on the minds of travelers, residents at an apartment building near the airport sat on their balconies with binoculars and long-angle camera lenses to watch investigators examine debris from the wreckage.

Wearing white face masks, rescue workers in orange, blue and yellow uniforms stood at the top of two passenger loading ramps, tossing charred pieces of rubble onto a conveyor belt.

Occasionally, a white sheet, apparently covering a body, could be seen moving down the belt toward waiting coroner vans.

A pickup truck hauled away a portion of the jet’s nose cone on Sunday; Saturday night, the 75-foot truck-mounted crane lifted the tail of the USAir jetliner to expose the interior. The tail and other chunks of the plane’s fuselage were taken to a nearby hangar.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the cause of the crash continued. Federal authorities who listened to the tape recorded conversations between the air traffic control tower and the two crews determined that a controller had allowed the jetliner to land on runway 24-Left one minute and 12 seconds after she had placed the commuter plane on the same landing strip.

The tape recordings suggest the controller was confused and harried, according to Burnett, of the NTSB.

The NTSB has asked the Federal Aviation Administration, which employs controllers, to supply urine and blood samples from the controller and from her supervisor. Burnett declined to identify the controller or answer questions about her experience or background.

FAA spokesman Fred O’Donnell said a urine test was conducted but that FAA policy does not require a blood test. The results were not released.

The controller and her supervisor have been placed on administrative duty and will not handle air traffic--a standard procedure after a crash. “These controllers are relieved of (air traffic) duties until such time as the investigation is concluded,” O’Donnell said.

NTSB investigators have not interviewed the controller. “We have not yet attempted to schedule an interview with her because we are not ready yet,” Burnett said.

Questions remained, meanwhile, about what happened inside the cockpits of the two air carriers in the moments before Friday’s disaster.

As they were preparing to land, the cockpit crew of the USAir jetliner would have been able to hear the controller positioning the commuter plane on the runway in front of them, veteran pilots said Sunday.

But the USAir crew might not have realized the runway was blocked because pilots listening to the cacophony of calls to as many as a dozen different planes tend to block out all those not addressed directly to them, said Dick Russell, who spent 37 years as a commercial airline pilot.

“You should be able to hear it,” Russell said. “It probably would be there. But it might not register.”

Russell, who said he had made hundreds of landings at LAX, many of them on that same runway, also said that at night, the crew of the USAir jet probably would not have been able to see the dimly lighted commuter plane, waiting about 2,400 feet down the runway, until it was too late to stop or swerve to avoid the collision.

According to investigators, the SkyWest plane taxied from the south side of the terminal complex, where its passengers had boarded, to the north side of the field about 6 p.m. The twin-prop plane used Taxiway 48, which crosses the airfield at midpoint.

Tape recordings indicate that the SkyWest plane called the controller at 6:03:37 to report that it was ready to leave the taxiway and enter Runway 24-Left about one-third of the way down the runway. The controller first told the plane to stop short of the runway.

Five seconds later, according to the tape recording, USAir Boeing 737 called the controller to request clearance to land. The request was not acknowledged.

At that moment, the jet was heading roughly west at an altitude of about 2,200 feet over an imaginary point known as “Romen,” where pilots customarily call the control tower for clearance to land. Romen is approximately over the intersection of the Harbor Freeway and 83rd Street, directly in line with Runway 24-Left.

Investigators have not yet revealed which man was at the controls of the jetliner--the captain, Colin F. Shaw, 46, or the First Officer, David Kelly, 33. Under normal circumstances, one crew member does the flying while the other handles radio communications and runs through a pre-landing checklist to make sure the flaps are down, the landing gear has been lowered and a myriad of other tasks have been completed.

“Both men are busy,” Russell said. “It’s a time-intensive period. Their attention is drawn inside the cockpit.”

At 6:04:44, as the USAir jet approached the airport, the controller told the SkyWest plane to “taxi into position and hold”--that is, to roll out onto the runway and stop, facing directly down the runway, in a position ready to take off.

Less than four seconds later, the SkyWest crew reported that it was in position. Andrew J. Lucas, 32, was captain of the aircraft and Frank C. Prentice III, 45, was serving as first officer, but investigators have not been revealed which man was at the controls.

The SkyWest plane did not have its bright landing lights, strobe lights or recognition lights on, and was illuminated only by its dimmer navigation lights and the red rotating beacons on the top and bottom of the fuselage, according to the crew of another taxiing commuter plane.

The NTSB said the lighting configuration used by the SkyWest plane complied with federal regulations, but would have made it harder to see than if it had been fully illuminated.

At 6:05:29, the USAir jetliner again asked for clearance to land. Once again, the controller failed to acknowledge the call.

Burnett, the NTSB official heading up the investigation, said that during this time, the controller was talking with several other aircraft.

Apparently confused as to which plane it was that she saw stationed on the runway at Taxiway 45, she “asked at least two other aircraft whether they were on the runway,” Burnett said. “The other planes said, ‘No.’ ”

In addition, Burnett said, the controller had a “difficult communication” with an Aeromexico flight, with parts of the conversation having to be repeated several times.

At 6:05:52, the USAir jetliner requested clearance to land for the third time. This time, the controller granted the clearance. About 45 seconds later, the big plane touched down on the runway at about 135 m.p.h. Passengers and other witnesses said this part of the landing seemed quite normal.

The jetliner probably touched down about 2,000 to 1,500 feet from where the SkyWest plane sat facing away, ready to take off.

Even if the USAir crew had seen the commercial plane immediately--and there is no indication that they did--it would have been extremely difficult to bring the big jet to a halt or swerve in time to avoid a collision, said veteran pilot Russell.

“You’ve have to be experienced in that sort of (extreme emergency) stop, and only test pilots are,” he said.

Judging from the skid marks from the jet’s tires, the USAir crew did not slam on the brakes until their plane was about 750 feet from the SkyWest commuter plane. The skid marks continue in a straight line to the point of impact.

Burnett said evidence at the spot where the planes collided indicates that the jetliner struck the commuter plane squarely from the rear, driving its nose down and its tail up, possibly rolling it entirely over.

The skid marks and a trail of debris then veer diagonally to the left, ending up at the small building against which the charred, mangled wreckage of the two planes came to rest. The building is 1,225 feet west and 625 feet south of the impact point.

The tape recordings show that at about that moment, a male voice--a controller or a member of some cockpit crew--shouted “What the hell . . .?”

It is not clear whether the shout came before, during or immediately after the impact.

A few seconds later, in a calm voice, the controller announced that she had observed an accident and asked, over the air, who was in need of assistance.

Also contributing to Times coverage of the crash at Los Angeles International Airport were staff writers Tina Anima, John Chandler, Rich Connell, Paul Feldman, Jesse Katz, Marc Lacey, Jeff Rabin, Iris Schneider, Ronald L. Soble, Tracy Wilkinson and Elaine Woo.

TEAM REACTION

The Vancouver Canucks’ hockey team saw the tragedy when their plane landed just before the USAir jetliner collided with a another plane. C1

SECOND SKYWEST TRAGEDY

The commuter airline was involved in a fatal accident four years ago that also may have been the result of controller error. D1