Toronto crash probe focuses on slides, tire marks

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Toronto crash probe focuses on slides, tire marks
Sat Aug 6, 2005 5:24 PM EDT
By Cameron French

TORONTO (Reuters) - Two emergency slides on the Air France jet that
crashed this week in Toronto malfunctioned, investigators said on
Saturday, as they pored over tire marks to determine why the plane
skidded off the end of a runway at Canada's busiest airport.

The Airbus A340 failed to stop after touching down during a severe
thunderstorm on Tuesday, plunging into a ravine and burning to a
charred and twisted hulk. All 309 people on board survived.

Investigators are studying data from the two black boxes -- flight
data and cockpit voice recorders -- plucked from the dismembered
plane, and are nearly finished combing through the wreckage.

They said four of the plane's doors and emergency exits were used
during the evacuation, and that experts had been brought in --
including from Goodrich Corp., which made the slides -- to determine
why two of them failed to work properly and why one door was hard to
open.

"They are on-site presently with the team and they are looking at why
these slides and (the door) did not work as advertised," said Real
Levasseur of Canada's Transportation Safety Board.

Levasseur, who is leading a team of more than 50 from Canada and
elsewhere, has said it appeared the plane touched down farther down
the runway than is normal for a jet of its size.

On Saturday, he said an expert from the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration was examining tire marks left on the runway.

PHOTOS OF ACCIDENT SOUGHT

Levasseur also said he had been going over eyewitness accounts of the
crash. He urged people who had taken pictures of the accident to come
forward.

"Sometimes you have eight reports who say the same thing and one who
says something different, and the one who is different is right," he
said.

He reiterated that so far there was no evidence of a mechanical
failure. Investigators were waiting to interview the pilot, who was
injured in the crash.

(Still haven't interviewed the pilot? Must be still trying to get a
lawyer.)

The Airbus A340-300 is one of the biggest commercial jets in service.
It is 208 feet long, seats nearly 300, has four engines and weighs a
maximum of 200 tonnes while landing.

The crash has also focused attention on Toronto's Pearson
International Airport, the biggest and busiest in Canada.

The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 64,000 airline
pilots at 41 airlines in Canada and the United States, has complained
about the ravine and said unobstructed "safety areas" were needed
beyond the end of runways to give planes more room to stop.

"It is the latest in a series of airline accidents that highlight the
dangers of inadequate runway safety areas," the association said.

Two people died in 1978 when an Air Canada plane ended up in the same
ravine, which is some 100 feet deep.

(If YYZ and the city of Toronto were smart, they'd turn the
troublesome ravine into Toronto's new municiple landfill.)