Crash probe focuses on single plane, not fleet
Airline checking suspect part on similar aircraft
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An NTSB employee stands in front of a makeshift memorial at the crash site Friday.
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Flight recorders may hold clues to cause of crash.
CNN's Miles O'Brien reports on the plane, its takeoff, and what may have gone wrong.
The scene shortly after the deadly crash (Amateur video, no audio)
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CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (CNN) -- Federal investigators believe with "a fair degree of confidence" that the cause of the crash of Air Midwest Flight 5481 on Wednesday was "a single event" and not a safety problem for similar planes in the fleet.
The airline has 43 planes similar to the one that crashed into a hangar at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport 37 seconds after takeoff, killing all 21 people aboard. Mesa Air Group, Air Midwest's parent company, was examining all 43 of its Beech 1900Ds. The airline was looking in particular at the elevator controller, which investigators suspect played a role in the crash.
A spokesman for Mesa told CNN on Friday afternoon that nine of the aircraft had been checked, and no problems had been found.
John Goglia, head of the National Transportation Safety Board team investigating the crash, said Friday that the mechanics who performed maintenance on the plane two days before the crash have been interviewed.
What was learned from the interviews, he said, "gives us some assurances that this is a single event. It gives us a fair degree of confidence that whatever this was, it was confined to one airplane."
The crash probe has focused on maintenance performed on one of the plane's key flight-control components Monday evening and on whether the aircraft could have been weighed down by too much luggage.
The Federal Aviation Administration asked the airline to inspect three of its planes that had been serviced at the same facility as the one that crashed. Mesa said Friday that those three checks found no problems. Mesa said it decided to inspect the entire fleet as a precaution.
"It was the prudent thing to do," said Jonathan Ornstein, Mesa's chairman.
The elevator controller of the crashed plane had been serviced at a facility in Huntington, West Virginia, operated by Raytheon, manufacturer of the Beech 1900D.
Goglia said the plane's flight data recorder showed suspicious movements of the plane's elevator during eight previous flights, all of which occurred after maintenance was done on the elevator Monday at Huntington.
The data recorder, recovered from the crash site, also contained information on 76 flights before Monday's maintenance, none of which showed unusual elevator movement, Goglia said.
The elevator is a horizontal, moveable piece on the tail that makes the tail go up and down, which, in turn, raises and lowers the plane's nose. Investigators are focusing on possible elevator problems because, according to the data recorder, the plane was climbing at an unusually steep angle just before the crash.
"Seven degrees is normal takeoff pitch angle. Something occurred to drive that pitch angle to 52 degrees," Goglia said. "That is abnormal." (Aircraft details)
Richard Mintz, a spokesman for Mesa, told CNN that the cables on the plane's elevator were adjusted but not replaced. (Where and how)
Air Midwest, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mesa, operates planes under brand names US Airways Express, Frontier JetExpress and America West Express. The flight that crashed was a US Airways Express flight en route from Charlotte to Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, with 19 passengers and two crew members on board.
Concerns over luggage weight
The NTSB team is also studying the amount of luggage placed on the plane.
Goglia said that according to interviews with the three baggage handlers who loaded the plane, a paperwork discrepancy prompted a discussion between the pilot and the baggage crew. Although initial paperwork authorized only 26 bags, the crew was told that 32 pieces could be loaded, he said.
One of the baggage handlers approached the captain, who authorized loading 32 bags, Goglia said. In the end, 31 bags were put on the plane, but according to the paperwork, the plane was still 100 pounds below its maximum allowed weight, he said.
A source told CNN that the FAA received an anonymous tip that a baggage handler expressed concerns that the plane was too heavy but was overruled by a supervisor.
"That has proven to be not true," Goglia said.
However, witnesses interviewed by the NTSB said the plane appeared to be too heavy, Goglia said.
Investigators have enough concern about the plane's weight and the amount of luggage placed on board "that we are going to follow that through to its logical conclusion," he said.
Goglia also said investigators will look at how the baggage was distributed in the plane, which could have thrown off its center of gravity.
Goglia said an examination of the remains showed that all of the doors and hatches were secure at the time of the crash, discounting earlier speculation that an open door or hatch could have contributed to the accident. Also, the plane's fuselage and wings appear to have landed upright, he said. Some earlier reports had said the plane turned belly-up before crashing.
One investigator told CNN that "nothing abnormal" was found on the cockpit voice recorder up to the time the pilot made an emergency call to the control tower. That communication was cut off -- probably by the impact of the crash -- before controllers could get details.
Family members of the crash victims were to visit the site Friday afternoon, Goglia said.
Flight 5481 took off into a clear, windy sky at 8:45 a.m. EST and was due at Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, 100 miles away, at 9:15 a.m. It originated in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The pilot reported an emergency shortly before the crash, and preliminary data indicate the turboprop was in the air for "37 seconds from takeoff to impact," Goglia said. It exploded in what has been described as a ball of flame. (Witness comments)
"The plane was unable to maintain altitude" on takeoff, veered to the left and flew 1,500 to 2,000 feet before clipping a hangar, causing a fire that was quickly extinguished, airport spokesman Jerry Orr said. (Final path of plane)
Past repairs
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A piece of wreckage from US Airways Express/Air Midwest Flight 5481 is tagged as evidence.
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FAA records show a leaky fuel pump was replaced on the plane last fall and landing gear that would not retract had to be fixed in May.
The plane was built in 1996 and had clocked slightly more than 15,000 hours of flight time, Air Midwest said.
The FAA said it put out a maintenance alert to airlines in August about Beech 1900D aircraft, saying a mechanic had found a loose vertical stabilizer bolt. The alert told airlines to check the stabilizers on all such aircraft.
Wednesday's crash was the fourth fatal mishap involving the Beech 1900D since the first models were built in 1991, according to the Aircraft Crash Record Office in Geneva, Switzerland. In the most recent, incident, seven people were killed in August 1999 in Quebec.
The others were in January of that year in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in which nobody died; July 1998 in Vannes, France, in which 14 were killed; and December 2, 1995, in Port au Prince, Haiti, in which 20 died, an aviation official told CNN.
CNN correspondents Patty Davis, Gary Tuchman and Susan Candiotti contributed to this article.
