Key plane parts could reveal cause of crash

US investigators have located key parts that might help reveal the pilot’s efforts to save a plane that crashed into a house, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

After a seemingly routine flight, the plane endured a 26-second plunge before smashing into a house in icy weather about six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York state last Thursday night.

Continental Connection Flight 3407 plunged to the ground so suddenly that sending a mayday was impossible, an investigator said.

The captain, Marvin Renslow, 47, was believed to be handling the duties of the pilot during the final moments aboard the Dash 8 Q400 plane, operated by Colgan Air. He had 3,379 hours of flying experience but had only flown the Dash 8 since December.

The flight’s first officer, Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, had 2,244 hours of experience and had flown the Dash 8 for 774 hours.

Yesterday, families of the victims visited the site for the first time and placed roses to remember the dead.

National Transportation Safety Board member Steve Chealander said investigators had located the steering column, or yoke; all the propeller blades; five of six de-icing valves; and rubber bladders designed to protect the tail from ice.

Though ice has emerged as a possible factor, the cause has remained elusive in part because there was no distress call from the pilot, no mechanical failure has been identified and the plane was so severely damaged.

The crew had turned on the plane’s de-icing system 11 minutes after leaving Newark, New Jersey. Shortly before the crash, they notified air traffic controllers that they were experiencing significant ice buildup.

Mr Chealander said on Sunday that the pilot appeared to ignore recommendations by the NTSB and his employer that the autopilot be turned off in icy conditions. The autopilot remained on until an automatic system warned that a stall could occur, pushed the yoke forward and shut the autopilot off.

Mr Chealander said it was possible that the pilot overreacted by yanking the yoke back, further destabilising the plane, but said that was one of an almost unlimited number of possibilities.

Kirk Koenig, president of Expert Aviation Consulting of Indianapolis and a commercial aviation pilot for 25 years, said the plane may have been in a predicament that would challenge even the most experienced pilots.

For example, if ice were forming on the wings, the pilot would want to put the nose down and increase power; if the icing were on the tail, the opposite would have been required, pulling the nose up and reducing power.

“Things happened so quickly and they were so low to the ground that it would not have mattered if Chuck Yeager and Neil Armstrong were flying the plane; there wouldn’t have been a different outcome,” Mr Koenig said.

Mr Chealander agreed, saying the pilots had their hands full and had no time to send a distress signal.

“They were trying to save their lives and the lives of everybody on that airplane,” he said.

Investigators have learned that the plane’s ice-detection system was the subject of a maintenance inquiry several flights before the crash. Mr Chealander said the system was rechecked and certified as operable and was operating on the flight to Buffalo.

The plane’s de-icing system was apparently working, the NTSB has said. That system includes strips of rubber-like material on the wings and tail that expand to break up ice, then contract and expand again to break up new ice.

The victims’ relatives who visited the scene yesterday left red roses dangling from temporary fencing and in a semi-circle on the ground.

More than 2,000 people, including relatives of the victims, turned out for a community prayer service yesterday.

The site of the house on a quiet, tree-lined street in a middle-class neighbourhood is now an almost empty dirty site. All that is left are a garage with a scorched door, a basketball hoop, four steps leading to nowhere, a mailbox – the numbers 6038 on its side – and the plane’s enormous tail.

The two closest homes, each no more than 2ft from the site, appear almost untouched.