Relatives Gather to Mourn 29 Killed in Plane Crash

Relatives of the 29 people who died in a commuter flight crash gathered to mourn Sunday in the snowy field where the turboprop plane went down.

Grieving family members met about 150 yards from deep craters dug by the plane’s nose dive. A dozen hay bales surrounded a makeshift blue-and-white memorial sign that read: “In memory of passengers and crew of Comair Flight 3272, from the community of Monroe County and southeast Michigan.”

About 200 family members visited the site throughout the day, said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Goelz.

At Immaculate Heart of Mary Motherhouse Chapel in Monroe, about 1,000 people attended a memorial service. The Rev. David Campbell, a chaplain at Mercy Memorial Hospital, told relatives, friends and community members that their lives would be intertwined forever.

“Your lives have touched ours,” he said. “None of us will ever be the same.”

Meanwhile, investigators sought clues to a mysterious so-called event captured on flight-data recorders just before the twin-engine turboprop Embraer 120 went down Thursday 18 miles short of Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

“At this point, we do not understand what the event is,” said NTSB member John Hammerschmidt. Tape analysts “have simply stated at this point an event occurred. They cannot be definitive to us about that.”

In Sunday’s 9-degree temperatures, about 30 investigators picked through the wreckage, putting debris and human remains in bags. The crews were still focusing on recovering the remains. Monroe County Medical Examiner David Lieberman said the crews were making good progress in identifying the remains.

Hammerschmidt said the plane’s pilot and co-pilot reported nothing unusual during the flight, air traffic controllers said nothing seemed amiss, and the crew that had flown the plane earlier in the day reported that all was well.

“The cockpit voice recorder indicates an uneventful, routine, orderly, businesslike flight from Cincinnati into the Detroit area,” Hammerschmidt said.

Shortly after the crash, a DC-3 pilot in the area reported moderate, mixed icing at 5,000 feet, he said. Ice on the wings can cause a loss of control.

Investigators say the crew was aware of the weather. The de-icing systems on Flight 3272 apparently were on and working, according to the cockpit voice recorder. But investigators will test if they were working when the plane crashed.