But in such accidents, one question investigators routinely ask is whether the crew was familiar with the airport. It was not immediately clear whether the change was a factor in the crash. The investigators will almost certainly look into why the plane flying as Korean Air Lines 801 yesterday was a Boeing 747 - normally Flight 801 uses an Airbus. ''If we can do that, we can do anything.'' 800 and ValuJet, I would have said the terrain might be a problem,'' Mr. That crash was attributed to a fire aboard the plane. Accompanying him was Greg Feith, who headed the investigation of the ValuJet crash last year in the Everglades. Black, the agency official in charge of the investigation, said that recovering pieces of the wreckage would not be difficult despite the nature of the terrain. An 18-person team from the National Transportation Safety Board left Andrews Air Force Base near Washington on a military transport plane other agency officials left from Los Angeles. Investigators were on their way to Guam last night. But the big jet made it only as far as Nimitz Hill, a thinly populated area where Guam's limestone plateau gives way to mountains volcanoes. Officials said the 13-year-old jet was running about an hour behind schedule when it was cleared to land on a runway that was built by the Japanese during World War II. Melissa Arnett, a 15-year-old high school student who had climbed out of bed to close her window because rain was blowing in, said she saw a red flash after hearing the plane lumber over. Witnesses described a bright burst of light in the foggy night sky, but it was not clear whether that was the fire set off by the crash or whether the flames began while the plane was still in the air. ''The plane was in five pieces and it's a miracle that anyone could come out of this.'' Michael Lancer, a Guam resident who reached the wreckage while it was still burning. ''I saw some people were able to walk away from the wreckage,'' said Dr. Reuters quoted witnesses as saying that the plane split into five parts when it crashed. ''We are continuing to go to the wreckage site to make sure that there is no one we are not able to find,'' aid a spokeswoman for Gov. The area of the search was extended to surrounding areas to look for people who may have been flung away from the plane by the impact, Reuters reported from Agana. Local officials also set up a makeshift morgue where they carried the bodies of victims. With the jet still smoldering, Navy construction crews began moving in to crack open the fuselage and try to rescue any other passengers who might still have been alive. Most of the survivors were being treated for second- or third-degree burns, officials said. At least 30 survivors were picked up by helicopters piloted by aviators with night-vision goggles, who took them to two hospitals - 17 to an American naval hospital, and 12 to Guam Memorial. They were followed by a bulldozer that slowly leveled a path over the rocky ground, the witnesses said.Įven so, evacuating the survivors was arduous - because of uneven ground and uncertain footing, it took four people to lift out each stretcher. The first rescuers had to make a maddeningly slow journey to the wreckage, trudging in with flashlights after hacking their way through razor-sharp grass that came up to their shoulders. Witnesses said the plane plowed through the jungle trailing smoke and flames, before it came to rest. White House officials said they had no early indications that terrorism had been a factor in the crash. However, a Korean aviation expert said that human error or engine trouble could not be ruled out. In Seoul, Korean Air said the circumstances indicated that the crash was caused by bad weather and faulty equipment at the airport on Guam. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators had found the voice and flight data recorders, which could help reconstruct the pilots' actions and the plane's movements in the minutes before it went down. Because of the bad weather, darkness and low visibility, the plane would have been relying more heavily on instruments to make the landing at Agana International Airport, where a radio system that tells pilots whether they are flying high enough as they approach the runway had been out of service since last month.
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