Investigators on Thursday found flight recorders that could hold important clues about why a UPS jet crashed near Birmingham’s airport, killing two pilots.
The voice and flight data recorders were found among the wreckage of the plane that went down as it was attempting to land in Birmingham early Wednesday. The plane slammed into a hillside just short of the runway.
Workers in white coveralls focused Thursday on the tail section of the aircraft where the devices are typically found. In the late morning, one of them emerged from the partially burned section carrying one of the recorders and put it on an all-terrain vehicle. Other debris remains on the ground and hasn’t been moved.
The search of the tail area had been delayed because it was still smoldering late Wednesday.
The A300 jet headed from Louisville, Ky., to Birmingham, Ala., crashed in a field near the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport around daybreak Wednesday, killing the two pilots on board and scattering wreckage over a wide area. The aircraft rained shards of metal into front yards and sheared off a piece of one family’s back deck.
Residents in a hilly neighborhood near the airport have worried for years about the possibility of a plane crash.
The crash happened in a grassy field where a neighborhood stood until several years ago, when airport officials began buying up and then razing houses to clear the area near the end of the runway.
But such offers, which began in 1986, weren’t made on some of the nearby homes, including that of Cornelius and Barbara Benson, who live in a two-story, split-foyer home just a short walk from the crash site.
“Hopefully we can get out of here now,” said Cornelius Benson.
The jet clipped trees around the Bensons’ yard, leaving broken plastic and twisted metal on the ground, and took a piece of their deck before slamming into a hill.
Other neighbors living near the airfield reported seeing flames coming from the aircraft and hearing its engines struggle in the final moments before impact.
“It was on fire before it hit,” said Jerome Sanders, who lives directly across from the runway.
Ryan Wimbleduff, who lives just across the street from the airport property, said the crash shook his house violently. Standing in his driveway, he and his mother could see the burning wreckage.
“I ran outside and it looked like the sun was coming up because of the fire on the hill,” he said. “Balls of fire were rolling toward us.”
A preliminary investigation indicated the pilots did not make any distress calls, NTSB board member Robert L. Sumwalt said.
The pilots’ names were not immediately released. But a man who identified himself as a family member said one of the pilots was Shanda Fanning, a woman in her mid-30s from Lynchburg, Tenn.
Wes Fanning, who said he was the woman’s brother-in-law, said Shanda Fanning had been flying since she was a teenager.
He said officials contacted her mother and that UPS representatives were with the family.
The plane was built in 2003 and had logged about 11,000 flight hours over 6,800 flights, Airbus said in a news release.
The A300, Airbus’ first plane, began flying in 1972. Airbus quit building them in 2007 after making a total of 816 A300 and A310s. The model was retired from U.S. passenger service in 2009.
Wednesday’s crash comes nearly three years after another UPS cargo plane crashed in the United Arab Emirates, just outside Dubai. Both pilots also were killed.
Authorities there blamed the Sept. 3, 2010, crash on the jet’s load of 80,000 to 90,000 lithium batteries, which are sensitive to temperature. Investigators determined that a fire probably began in the cargo containing the batteries.
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