PORT HUENEME, Calif. -- With startling speed, investigators have located three key pieces of evidence in the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261: both "black boxes" and the tail control singled out by the pilots before the jet's plunge into the Pacific Ocean.
The flight data recorder was recovered from the ocean floor by the Navy on Thursday, not far from where the cockpit voice recorder was found a day earlier. Also spotted was a large piece of the tail, complete with the airline's distinctive logo of a smiling Alaskan native.All were in about 650 feet of water about 10 miles from shore. It is where the MD-83 crashed Monday, killing all 88 people aboard.
A Navy submersible sent up video images of a piece of the fuselage with four windows, several pieces up to six feet wide and numerous smaller pieces, said John Hammerschmidt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Also captured were pictures of the tail's horizontal stabilizer, which has been the focus of the investigation. NTSB officials said they were not able to describe the condition of the tail and stabilizer.
Hammerschmidt declined to say whether searchers had found any bodies, some of which are believed trapped under the debris. Recovery efforts resumed Friday. Officials were faced Friday with the decision of whether to try and recover the 84 bodies presumably entombed in the aircraft's fuselage or commit them to a watery grave.
Meanwhile, friends and relatives of the victims gathered Thursday on a beach facing the Santa Barbara Channel for a private memorial.
A few mourners roamed the shore alone, some clustered in small groups and others waded into the surf. They gathered as a group inside the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station, where they were kept away from reporters.
The cause of the crash has not been determined, but investigators have disclosed a surprising amount of detail about the flight bound from Mexico to San Francisco and Seattle.
Citing the voice recorder, the NTSB said the pilots were discussing a problem with the horizontal stabilizer at least 30 minutes before the crash. The stabilizer, a wing on the tail of an aircraft, is designed to adjust -- or trim -- the up-or-down angle of an aircraft's nose.
At one point, according to NTSB Chairman Jim Hall, the pilots did regain control of Flight 261 -- and then it was "suddenly lost."
Investigators are looking into the possibility that the pilots put the plane into its fatal dive by following proper procedures for correcting a stabilizer problem, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday, citing unidentified NTSB sources.
While the NTSB was expected to begin making a transcript of the cockpit conversation, the data recorder, which tracks electrical and mechanical operations during a flight, could reveal if the stabilizer problem was what brought the plane down.
Though stabilizer problems are rare, regulators last May gave airlines 18 months to inspect hinges connecting parts of the tail for signs of corrosion. An error during manufacture can cause the hinges to rust more easily. The Alaska Airlines jet that crashed had not yet undergone the inspection, but 10 of the MD-80s in the fleet did and showed no unusual corrosion, said airline spokesman David Marriott. Records on other airlines' fleets were not immediately available.