The nose of a Southwest Airlines plane that crash-landed at New York's La Guardia airport tilted down just before landing, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said yesterday.
The safety body said its preliminary investigation had found that the plane had been nose-up when it was just 32 feet (9.8m) above ground but was pitched down by three degrees at touchdown.
As a result, the Boeing 737-700's front landing gear, which collapsed on landing, hit the ground first. Ten passengers were wounded in the incident.
The NTSB did not say if the nose-down angle of the plane was responsible for the landing gear collapsing or if it should have been capable of coping with the shock.
A Southwest Boeing 737 aeroplane sits on the tarmac after passengers were evacuated, at La Guardia Airport in New York, in this photo courtesy of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made available on July 23, 2013. US safety regulators launched an investigation on Tuesday into the collapse of the front landing gear on the Southwest Airlines plane shortly after it touched down at La Guardia Airport on Monday evening. - Reuters
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The investigation is continuing, with conversations recorded on the cockpit voice recorder due to be transcribed and analyzed today. They may indicate if pilot error was a factor in the accident.
Traumatized passengers recounted after the accident how they had heard a loud bang on touchdown, which was followed by sparks flying as the nose of the plane scraped along the runway for 19 seconds before it came to a halt.
All 150 people on board flight 345 from Nashville were evacuated via emergency slides and 10 were subsequently treated for various injuries.
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