Jet Crash Kills 131 Near Pittsburgh; Worst in 7 Years : Disaster: USAir plane out of Chicago nose-dives into hillside while trying to land. Eyewitness said craft 'was going straight down, and then a big ball of fire came up.'

By JUDY PASTERNAK, MICHAEL ROSS and BILL STEIGERWALD

Sept. 9, 1994 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. — A USAir jetliner roared out of a clear evening sky and hurtled nose first into a wooded hill late Thursday about a half-mile from a small shopping center near this Pennsylvania steel town, killing all 131 people on board. It was the deadliest airplane crash in the United States in seven years.

The plane, a Boeing 737 en route from Chicago to Pittsburgh, had been scheduled to continue on to West Palm Beach, Fla. It shattered on impact. Engine parts, pieces of airframe and passenger seats flew across the hillside, setting fires. The bodies of its passengers and five crew members were torn apart and thrown into bushes and trees.

“Our crew members landed at the scene and (said) there were no survivors,” said Jim Bothwell, director of STAT-Medevac in Pittsburgh, about 20 miles away. STAT helicopters were contacted by air traffic controllers to search for the plane when it disappeared from radar. “(Rescuers) said the aircraft crashed nose-down.”

The National Transportation Safety Board in Washington dispatched investigators to determine the cause of the crash.

“There was no indication there was any problem with the flight,” said USAir Assistant Vice President Dave Shipley. “The weather was clear. . . . We have no indication at all as to what caused the accident.”

The plane’s “black box,” containing flight data, was recovered, said Jim Eichenlaub, who coordinated emergency services at the crash scene. Information in the box was expected to help investigators piece together what happened to the aircraft during the fatal moments before it plummeted to the ground.

It was the fifth fatal USAir crash in five years. In 1989, a USAir jet skidded off a New York runway, killing two people; in 1991, another collided with a commuter plane on a Los Angeles runway, killing 34; in 1992, another crashed on takeoff in New York, killing 27, and last July 2, another crashed at Charlotte, N.C., killing 37.

Shipley acknowledged that USAir’s safety record has been marred in recent years. But he noted that in the Los Angeles collision, “we were totally exonerated from blame.” He added: “There has been no thread of continuity whatsoever” among the five crashes. He said Boeing 737s were “completely safe.”

President Leo Janssens of the Aviation Safety Institute, a private air safety organization, agreed with the assessment. He told CNN that the Boeing 737 has “an excellent safety record.” Janssens added that USAir “normally runs a good airline.” He blamed its five crashes on nothing more than “a run of bad luck.”

Thursday’s ill-fated Flight 427 began in Chicago.

At about 7:02 p.m., about six minutes before touchdown at Pittsburgh International Airport, the plane vanished from radar screens in the Pittsburgh control tower, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Pat Cariseo said.

The plane was about 6,000 feet above the ground when it disappeared, said Pat Boyle, a spokesman for the Allegheny County Department of Aviation. Boyle said that it was about seven miles from the end of the runway in Pittsburgh.

Mary Ann Koren, her son, John Koren Jr., 32, and her daughter, Martina, said they were at home, near the airport flight path, when the accident occurred. They were sitting in their living room in front of their television set and had just tuned in “Jeopardy” when they heard the jet roar overhead.

“Our house was rumbling,” Mary Ann Koren said. “It was like a real loud roar.”

She said that she and her son and daughter ran to their front door. “We saw the plane going straight down,” she said, “nose first.”

They grabbed blankets and tried in vain to drive to the site of the crash. They finally cut their way through a wooded area.

“There were flames,” John Koren Jr. said. “I saw a seat and some body parts . . . lying at Martina’s feet.”

The wreckage was scattered among trees on a hilltop about a half-mile from the Green Garden Plaza, a small strip mall near Aliquippa. The hilltop is in Beaver County, near the border of Hopewell and Raccoon townships, in terrain so rough that rescuers had to cut a road to find the wreckage.

Fire trucks and rescuers followed bulldozers to the site. Among the first to arrive was Dr. Stephen Zernich Jr., a physician from Aliquippa Hospital.

“I saw pieces of bodies on the ground, a body hanging in the trees and several small fires,” he said. In the underbrush, he said, he saw a foot, an arm, a hand severed at the wrist and small pieces of human bone.

Smoke from burning jet fuel was extremely thick. A fireman stepped out of the haze. Dr. Zernich said he asked the fireman if anyone had survived.

“ ‘No,’ ” he said the fireman replied. “ ‘There were no survivors in there, Doc. You might as well go back.’ ”

A police officer from the nearby town of Shippingport, who declined to give his name, said he saw debris from the plane everywhere--”engine parts, framework, parts of seats. I saw parts of bodies. I’m a Vietnam vet. I’ve seen this before--after B-52 strikes.

“That’s what this reminded me of. Not too much of anything (is) left.”

Other eyewitnesses gave equally vivid accounts:

“I looked straight up, and there it was,” Tom Michel told the Associated Press. “It was just coming straight down. I was screaming for everybody to run. It looked like it was under full power, and he just went straight in. . . . All it was was a big boom and the sky lit up. There was black smoke everywhere, and that was it.”

Denise Godich, a nurse, told KDKA-TV, a station in nearby Pittsburgh: “We saw the plane go down, straight down, and then all we saw was smoke. All we saw was body parts hanging from the trees, just people everywhere. My husband said the only body he could recognize was a 3- or 4-year-old girl.”

Jack Casey told the TV station: “I saw the tail end, and it was going straight down, and then a big ball of fire came up. I spent time in Korea, and it’s the worst thing I’ve seen.”

A woman near the wreckage, Sandra Zuback, told CNN: “The engines just went dead. It just blew up.”

The Federal Aviation Administration took control of the area and sealed it off. The FAA called in FBI agents to fingerprint the remains so that they could identify the victims. A temporary morgue was set up near the scene.

Allegheny County Commissioner Larry Dunn, whose office runs the Pittsburgh airport, said USAir set up an area to receive relatives of the crash victims. He said about 290 had arrived by midnight.

“It’s just such a terrible tragedy,” Dunn said. “You can’t feel the extent of what this is like.” He said the mood in the closed reception area where families had been sequestered was “very somber.”

“People are dumbstruck by the tragedy of it,” he said.

Tom Briercheck, 56, of Pittsburgh, counted himself lucky to have avoided the tragedy. He missed the fatal flight. Briercheck had attended a machine tool show in Chicago, then stayed downtown for a couple of beers--and was late for the plane.

Briercheck and David Carter, a factory manager for his company, arrived at the Chicago airport just as the flight left, around 6 p.m. They had another beer. When they returned to check for a later flight, a ticket agent told Briercheck he should count his blessings.

Briercheck called home from O’Hare International Airport at 7:15 p.m. His 13-year-old grandson, Billy, answered the telephone in tears. When he heard who it was, the child yelled, “Grandma! He’s O.K.! He’s coming home!”

“It really didn’t hit me until then how fortunate I was,” Briercheck said. He added that he plans to play the numbers when he gets home.

“My wife won’t complain anymore,” he said, “when I have that extra beer.”

The crash was the worst in the United States since 1987, when a Northwest Airlines MD-80 went down at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing 156 people. A 4-year-old girl was the sole survivor.

The cause of Thursday’s crash was all the more perplexing because weather did not appear to have been a factor.

The hourly weather report at 6:52 p.m. EDT for the Pittsburgh airport was clear, visibility 15 miles, temperature 73 degrees and the wind at 7 m.p.h.--perfect for flying.

Circumstances of the crash seemed similar to an accident involving a United Air Lines Boeing 737 that rolled over and dived into the ground on March 3, 1991, while on approach to the airport at Colorado Springs, Colo.

During its investigation of that crash, the NTSB discovered abnormalities in rudder control and recommended that the rudders of all Boeing 737 and 727 aircraft be inspected.

The FAA issued an aircraft directive, a mandatory repair order, as a result of the NTSB recommendation. This led Boeing to redesign the “rudder power control unit servo valve,” a hydraulic control system component in the 737, according to Boeing spokesman Steve Thieme.

The new parts were made available early last year, and all 737s in service and on the production line have been retrofitted, Thieme said.

At the time of Thursday’s crash, the USAir jet should have been flying at about 220 to 230 knots, according to a former USAir employee familiar with the Boeing 737 who declined to be identified.

Any problems with aircraft systems should have been easily overcome, he said.

The 737 is a twin-engine aircraft that can fly well on one engine. Failure of an engine at that point in flight would have meant a shutdown, an operation easily accomplished by a two-person flight crew, said a pilot familiar with the aircraft.

Similarly, the pilot said, a failure of hydraulic systems that control ailerons, which make the plane turn, or the rudder, which keeps it properly aligned with the direction of flight, should have posed little problem.

The plane should have had plenty of altitude and air speed to recover from any unusual flight attitude caused by such a failure, the pilot said.

The plane that crashed, a 737-300 model, was delivered to USAir in October, 1987. It was a middle-sized model of three 737s currently in production. Depending upon configuration, it could hold 128 to 149 passengers.

The 737, in its various models, is Boeing’s most popular airliner. As of June 30, 1994, the manufacturer had delivered 2,624 of them to airlines around the world.

Three of the five USAir crashes in the last five years have involved Boeing 737s. But USAir officials and others discounted the likelihood that the plane had a mechanical problem.

“There’s no question that the 737 is a completely safe airplane,” Shipley, the USAir assistant vice president, told CNN. “We operate a lot of them, as do a lot of airlines.”

USAir has encountered financial problems in recent years. It has blamed fare wars, fewer passengers because of fears of terrorism and the nation’s economic recession. Altogether, the airline has lost more than $2.3 billion since 1989.

The loss has caused USAir to cut costs to try to increase its revenue.

Only hours before Thursday’s crash, the carrier announced a plan to provide business passengers with more leg room and wider seats.

Times staff writers Pasternak and Ross reported from Pittsburgh, and special correspondent Steigerwald from Aliquippa. Staff writers Richard E. Meyer, Richard O’Reilly and Shawn Hubler in Los Angeles also contributed to this story.

Adding to a Long List of Air Disasters

A USAir Boeing 737 from Chicago crashed near Pittsburgh, Pa., killing 131. The flight originated from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and was headed for West Palm Beach, Fla. This is the fifth fatal crash for the airline in five years.

The Boeing 737-300

* Delivered to USAir in October, 1987, according to a Boeing spokesman.

* Can carry from 128 to 149 passengers.

* The 737-300 is the most popular commercial airplane model ever developed.

* More than 2,600 737s have been put into service since 1967.

USAir Disasters

Five fatal crashes in five years:

* SEPT. 8, 1994: A Boeing 737 crashes near Pittsburgh, Pa., killing 131 people.

* JULY 4, 1994: A crash near Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina kills 37 of the 57 aboard.

* MARCH 22, 1992: A jetliner goes down in a snowstorm at LaGuardia Airport in New York killing 27 people.

* FEB. 1, 1991: A collision with a commuter plane at Los Angeles International Airport kills 34 people.

* SEPT. 20, 1989: A jet skids off the runway at La Guardia Airport. Two killed.