ValuJet Cockpit Tape Supports Evidence of Fire

Minutes before ValuJet Flight 592 plunged nose down into the Everglades, fire was spreading through the forward section of the aircraft and passengers were struggling to breathe, a federal investigator said Monday.

A preliminary reading of the DC-9’s cockpit voice recorder, recovered from the marshy crash site Sunday, seems to support physical evidence gleaned from the wreckage that the fatal May 11 crash occurred after the jetliner was disabled by a smoky fire that probably started in the plane’s forward cargo hold.

The Atlanta-bound jet slammed into the Everglades minutes after taking off from Miami International Airport. All 105 passengers and five crew members on board were killed.

Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, speaking at a press briefing Monday in Washington, said that although the cockpit voice recorder had been buried in the muck and water for 15 days and that conversations would prove difficult to decipher, the recording had already yielded clues crucial to pinpointing the cause of the crash.

“It appears that the cockpit door opened--and I say appears--but there were verbal indications from the cockpit that there was fire in the passenger cabin,” Francis said. “There was also an indication from the cabin that there were problems obtaining oxygen.”

Francis did not elaborate on whether or not the cockpit door was opened by a flight attendant, and if so, whether that contravened safety procedures. He did say, however, that “there was some communication, which was not by intercom, from the cabin to the cockpit.”

Neither would Francis speculate on whether the problems with oxygen meant that the ceiling masks were not working or if the oxygen they supplied was not sufficient to overcome the thick black smoke that investigators have said appears to have poured up into the passenger cabin from the cargo hold.

Filling in the details of Flight 592’s last minutes will be “an enormously sophisticated and complicated and time-consuming task,” Francis said. He added: “This is not going to be a question of hours, but of days.”

Francis said that the first signs of fire aboard the aircraft did not come to the attention of the cockpit crew until after the plane had been in the air at least six minutes. Then, according to information gathered earlier from the flight data recorder and conversations with Miami air traffic controllers, the cockpit crew reported smoke in the cockpit and the cabin, and asked for directions back to the airport.

About five minutes later, the plane was down.

At a briefing in Miami on Sunday, chief NTSB investigator Gregory A. Feith said soot stains and a melted aluminum seat frame pointed to smoke and fire in the passenger cabin, a fire that was burning at temperatures above 500 degrees.

As the investigation into the crash continues, the NTSB will look further into 119 oxygen generators that were packed into the jet’s cargo hold. Some of the canisters may have contained a volatile mix of chemicals that could have either sparked or fueled a fire.

ValuJet was not authorized to carry the canisters, none of which had safety caps. Feith said that two end caps from the canisters had been found inside a tire that had also been put in the forward cargo hold. The tire also showed heat damage.

Meanwhile, in the Everglades on Monday, divers in protective suits continued to comb the crash site, about 15 miles northwest of the airport, in a bid to recover more of the shattered fragments of the aircraft. So far, the remains of only eight victims have been identified.