Sifting Through the Wreckage

Carcasses of smoking metal, charred suitcases, melted serving carts and bodies draped with bright yellow tarpaulins dotted the deserted highway. For the investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), this nightmarish landscape was not only a grisly tableau of tragedy but also a field of evidence offering myriad clues. Their task, which began last week and may not end for months, was to solve the mystery of Northwest Airlines Flight 255. Why had the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 bound for Phoenix from Detroit's Metropolitan Airport, plunged to earth only seconds after takeoff, killing 154 passengers and crew members on the plane, sparing only four-year- old Cecilia Cichan?

Throughout the summer, anxiety about an air disaster climbed along with the temperature. The skies were judged to be particularly crowded; reports multiplied of near collisions, of overworked air-traffic controllers, of indifferent maintenance. Yet the crash of Flight 255 ended a remarkable two- year stretch without a single fatal accident involving a major domestic carrier. Moreover, 255's demise may have had less to do with unfriendly skies than with the eternal variable of human fallibility. Preliminary reports suggested that the pilot may have failed to take a routine, essential step: extend the wing flaps and slats that provide the jet with extra lift for takeoff.

At 8:45 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 16, the radio tower at Metropolitan Airport cleared Flight 255 for departure. Captain John R. Maus, 57, a veteran pilot with 20,000 hours of flight experience, 2,000 of them in MD-80s, taxied the plane onto runway 3-Center North. The plane, loaded with a full 39,128 lbs. of jet fuel and 6,000 lbs. of baggage, hurtled farther than normal down the runway and rose less than 50 feet before plunging. In the cockpit, a computer- generated voice repeated the words "stall . . . stall," indicating that the airflow over the wings was no longer sufficient to lift the plane; the jet was falling, not flying. Traveling at about 215 m.p.h., the plane knocked a jagged piece off the roof of a rental-car building and then ricocheted off the embankment of an access road to Interstate 94. Flight 255 disintegrated into chunks of fiery metal, smashing three cars and killing at least three more people, the cars' drivers.

Within four hours, a group of 13 NTSB investigators -- known as a "go team" -- left for Detroit from Washington. The NTSB, an independent federal agency, is responsible for investigating all U.S. civil aviation accidents and making recommendations for transportation safety. By dawn the team members were sifting through the wreckage, a painstaking, hands-on activity they call "kicking tin." The investigators, who include electrical engineers, pilots, and engine and airframe mechanics, then formed "working groups." These groups pore over possible factors in the crash: the jet's engines and systems, the quality of air-traffic control, the weather, and the emotional and medical states of the people involved.