The plane vocal recorder did not work in the Philadelphia crash

Philadelphia (AP) – The cockpit voice recorder did not work on a medical transport aircraft that killed seven people when he fell in a neighborhood in Philadelphia in January and probably did not work for several years, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday in a preliminary report. The NTSB also confirmed that the crew made no distress to control over air traffic. A ground alert system that can contain flight data memory is still being evaluated by the manufacturer, the agency said.

THE Plane fell In a residential and commercial area within a minute after taking off from the northeast airport of Philadelphia and broke out in a fireball on January 31. The officials said the accident killed the six people on the Learjet 55 and a seventh person which was in a vehicle on the ground. At least two dozen others were injured, including a 10 -year -old boy in a vehicle that was Struck by debris while trying to protect his sister.

The former president of the NTSB, Jim Hall, described the discovery of the recording of the “disturbing” cockpit because “that and the entire flight data recorder are important to discover what went wrong”.

“It is a significant loss of important information that should have been there,” said Hall.

He noted that the absence of a distress call shows that the urgency occurred too quickly for the crew to communicate with the tower.

People on the plane included an 11 -year -old girl who had received medical treatment at the Philadelphia hospital in Shriners Children. Jet Rescue Air Ambulance said that the plane took Valentina Guzmán Murillo and her 31 -year -old mother, Lizeth Murillo Osuna, who houses Mexico.

The messages requesting comments were left Thursday with Jet Rescue. The company previously identified its team aboard Dr. Raul Meza Arredondo, 41 years old; The captain, Alan Montoya Perales, 46 years old; Copilot Josue de Jesus Juarez Juarez, 43; And paramedical Rodrigo Lopez Padilla, 41 years old. All four came from Mexico.

According to the report, the recorder was recovered by 8 feet (2.4 meters) underground after the accident and suffered significant damage, including exposure to liquids. After cleaning and in -depth repairs, the agency discovered that the 30 -minute band had not audio the flight.

The high impact accident has destroyed or seriously damaged more than a dozen houses and business, leaving the debris of the plane scattered through a large area Almost 500 meters (457 meters) long and 300 meters (274 meters) wide.

The former NTSB investigator Jeff Guzzetti said that the loss of any cockpit recording makes the work of the agency more difficult, but not impossible. He hoped that the ground alert system can provide data and wondered why the voice recorder had not been inspected regularly.

“I really think it puts a black brand on this Mexican operator, so as not to make sure that their cockpit voice recorder worked,” said Guzzetti. “The NTSB, I think, will always be able to achieve a probable cause, simply because they are really good for extracting circumstantial evidence.”

Under Mexican regulations, the owners are supposed to include vocal data recorders and theft in planes maintenance plans, and the government authority where the planes are recorded is responsible for the supervision of these plans and the verification of planes to ensure that what is in the documents is true at least once a year, said Rogelio Rodríguez Garduño, Aviation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico City.

The civil aviation authorities in Mexico did not respond to an associated request for documents on the Jet Rescue interview.

Guzzetti, a main investigator of the NTSB on the fatal accident of John F. Kennedy Jr. near Martha’s Vineyard, thinks that the Philadelphia accident has some of the same characteristics of a pilot suffering from “spatial disorientation” in a dark or cloudy sky.

This happens, he said, when the pilots lose their bearings, do not trust their instruments and turn, sometimes on several occasions, in an erroneous attempt to correct the course. The Learjet to Philadelphia, he noted, “came by shouting from the sky – and he also made turns – and once again, you see these same types of turns in the accident of JFK Jr.

“The human body can play tricks on you, and that is why you must be incredibly vigilant as a pilot and trust your instruments,” he said. “But, you know, that does not mean that there could not be a kind of distraction in the cockpit which also occurred during this period.”

Several victims on the ground have kept law firms to represent them in potential prosecution, including a man seriously burned after his SUV was swallowed up in jet fuel.

The accident was part of recent aviation disasters and close calls that left some people worried about flight security. This occurred two days after an American Airlines plane and an army helicopter collided in the air in Washington, DC – the The deadliest air disaster in a generation.

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Journalists Maria Verza in Mexico City and Mark ScoForo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.