NEW YORK, Nov. 13 – A missing flight data recorder from a doomed American Airlines flight that left more than 260 people dead was recovered Tuesday as federal investigators at the crash site pored over a large chunk of fuselage for additional clues.
The data recorder — one of the two “black boxes” aboard Flight 587 — could help investigators determine the cause of the crash just three minutes after the plane took off from Kennedy International Airport.
The discovery came more than 24 hours after the plane went down in a beachfront section of Queens on Monday morning, said NTSB spokeswoman Tawana Thomas. All 260 passengers and crew, along with perhaps five people on the ground, were killed, authorities said.
The second black box tracks speed and actions of the engine and instruments. The first, the voice recorder found Monday, didn’t indicate any problems aboard the flight.
“The communications from the cockpit were normal up until the last few seconds before the crash,” said NTSB head Marion Blakey. She did not elaborate on the last few moments.
Relatives of the victims gathered Tuesday in hopes of recovering their loved ones’ remains.
American Airlines Flight 587 crashed after raining debris on the Rockaway section of Queens, initially raising the specter of another terrorist attack.
Authorities said early signs pointed to an accident, basing their assessment partly on communications heard on the cockpit voice recorder. But they did not rule out sabotage or other causes.
“We’re not going to exclude that possibility until the investigation goes much further than this,” George Black, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show.
A source close to the investigation said the board also was looking at whether the engines failed after sucking in birds. Kennedy Airport, running along Jamaica Bay, has had problems with birds on the runway.
All 260 people aboard the European-made Airbus A300 were killed, the airline said. In addition, five people were reported missing in the Belle Harbor neighborhood, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.
The mayor said Tuesday that 262 bodies had been recovered along with 180 parts of bodies. According to police, the bodies included a man found holding a baby.
Working in the glare of klieg lights, the recovery continued through the night as firefighters and dogs went through the rubble.
Monday’s crash initially renewed terrorism fears. The Empire State Building was evacuated, and bridges, tunnels and all three of the New York area’s major airports were closed for a time.
“The assumption the police had to make and I had to make was that there was going to be another attack, and so we had to close down parts of the city,” Giuliani said on “Today.”
Witnesses reported hearing an explosion and seeing an engine, a large chunk of a wing and other debris falling from the sky as the plane came down.
If there was an explosion on the plane — and many witnesses heard one — it was probably caused by a mechanical failure, investigators said.
There have been documented failures involving the family of CF6 General Electric engines on the plane, though none involved fatalities. The Federal Aviation Administration warned just last month that its own study of problems with these engines indicates a need for tougher, mandatory inspections of possibly worn parts. GE is the parent company of NBC.
The NTSB warned separately less than a year ago that an in-flight failure of these engines could send hot metal fragments tearing through important control systems or fuel lines — and could cause a plane to crash.
The NTSB’s Black cautioned it was “way too early” to connect the crash with other failures involving the type of engine that powered the airplane. But he added: “We will be looking at that.”
He said that the quality of the voice recorder was good, and that the co-pilot was at the controls, which was not unusual. Black said it was possible that the flight data recorder could have fallen into the water and that sonar might be used to search for it.
The plane’s vertical stabilizer — the tailfin — was found floating in Jamaica Bay, just offshore. Visible on the wreckage were the American Airlines logo and an American flag.
One smoking engine was found intact in a parking lot at a Texaco station two blocks from the crash site, where it had missed the gas pumps by no more than 6 feet. Part of the second engine was found another block away, in a back yard.
Eleven houses were destroyed or seriously damaged. In some cases, the siding was melted off the homes. Dozens of people were hospitalized after responding to the inferno.
