A crane removes remains of the fuselage of the Chalk's Ocean Airways seaplane from the sea in Miami Beach, Florida, yesterday. A twin-engine seaplane that crashed just off Miami Beach, killing at least 19, had a 'fatigue crack' that might have caused it to lose its right wing, federal investigators said yesterday. - REUTERS
MIAMI BEACH, Florida (AP):
THE WING that fell off a seaplane before it crashed, killing all 20 people on board, had cracks in the main support beam that had probably gone unseen for a long time, federal investigators said yesterday.
Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, stopped short of saying the cracking was the sole reason the right wing fell off the 58-year-old plane Monday shortly after it took for the Bahamas.
But Rosenker told a news conference that the cracking should have been found and repaired, although it would have taken "a very serious" inspection to find it.
The Chalk's Ocean Airways plane plummeted into the Government Cut channel off the southern tip of Miami Beach in front of horrified beachgoers.
The cracks were in the main support beam that connected the wing to the fuselage. Rosenker said that if Chalk's officials had known about the cracking "they would have repaired it and we wouldn't be here today. I don't think they knew it."
The propeller and engine were still attached when salvage crews raised the right wing from the channel Tuesday. Crews began raising the rest of the plane from 35 feet ( 10.5 meters) of water yesterday and Rosenker said inspectors will closely examine the remaining part of the support beam.
The plane was retrofitted in the 1980s with more powerful engines, but it wasn't clear what role if any that played in the cracking, Rosenker said.
Chalk's officials had no immediate comment Wednesday.
Rosenker said the NTSB meet with other federal authorities and Chalk's about whether to ground its remaining four Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallards. He said other U.S. and foreign operators also fly the plane, but he wasn't sure how many are still in operation.
Older aeroplanes have been a concern for federal safety officials since 1988, when fatigue cracking caused the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 to peel off over Maui.
A flight attendant was sucked out of the aeroplane and lost at sea. The Aloha 737 was 19 years old when the accident occurred, but it had taken off and landed more than 80,000 times.
That accident, and a subsequent law passed by Congress in 1991, prompted the FAA to step up its requirements for inspections and maintenance of ageing aircraft.
Eighteen passengers _ including three infants _ and two crew members were on Monday's flight. At least 11 of the victims were returning home to the Bahamian island of Bimini, many of them after Christmas shopping jaunts. Weeping islanders went house to house Tuesday to grieve.
"The island at this time is in an uproar," said Walter Stuart of Miami, who lost 11 family members in the crash.
Chalk's Ocean Airways was founded in 1919, and its aircraft have been featured in TV shows like "Miami Vice." Its floating planes take off in view of the port and waterfront multimillion-dollar homes.
