Runway 13 at La Guardia Airport appeared to be all white to the pilots of a Delta Air Lines jet that skidded off it and through a perimeter fence during a snowstorm on Thursday, they told federal investigators over the weekend.
The pilots said the brakes were set to "max" but did not seem to slow the plane after it touched down and began skidding toward Flushing Bay, according to a report issued on Monday afternoon by the National Transportation Safety Board. Investigators have not reached any conclusions about what caused the crash, which left 23 passengers with minor injuries.
The report said the plane, which was arriving from Atlanta with 132 people on board, veered off the left side of the runway at an angle of about 10 degrees shortly after it touched down. Its left wing struck the fence that crowned a berm near the water's edge. The plane continued rolling parallel to the runway for several hundred feet before coming to rest with its nose cone broken off.
Investigators are trying to determine why the plane, an MD-88 operating as Flight 1086, failed to land safely when a few others that preceded it had arrived without incident. The report said that another MD-88 landed on the same runway just three minutes before and that the pilots of two other jets that had landed there reported that the braking conditions were "good."
Current and former commercial pilots familiar with La Guardia said the report did not indicate there had been any mechanical failure. They gleaned from it that the plane was sliding on a slippery surface and that, for whatever reason, the pilot could not steer it away from the berm.
The report said the captain told investigators that the spoilers on the plane's wings, which help push the plane down onto its wheels and to slow it, did not automatically deploy. But he said the co-pilot "quickly deployed them manually," the report said.
James E. Hall, a former safety board chairman, said the report showed that investigators were examining the plane's braking system, among other factors.
LAGUARDIA AIRPORT
Approximate
location of plane
2,000 FT
By The New York Times; Image by Google
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