Medical plane that crashed in Philadelphia lacked cockpit recorder

In the weeks after a medical transport plane crashed in northeast Philadelphia in January within a minute of takeoff, killing seven people, investigators had hoped that the plane’s cockpit voice recorder would contain clues to what had gone wrong. But after the recorder was recovered from beneath eight feet of soil and debris, those hopes were dashed: The recorder did not record anything during the jet’s final, fatal flight. In fact, it “had likely not been recording audio for several years,” according to a preliminary report released on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board. Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator for the N.T.S.B. and the FAA, said the finding was “shocking.” Federal rules for medical transport flights on planes registered in the United States require the use of cockpit voice recorders, though the plane in this case was registered in Mexico. “It really hobbles the investigation at this point, given the lack of other information due to the destruction of this wreckage,” he said. N.T.S.B. officials did not discuss their four-page report, which contained little information to point to the cause of the crash. It said the flight crew was in communication with air traffic control and that no distress calls from the crew had been received. Investigators also recovered the computer for the plane’s Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System, which helps pilots avoid collisions. The computer was still being evaluated to determine whether flight data could be recovered, according to the report. The small medical transport jet crashed less than a minute after it took off, killing seven people and engulfing homes and vehicles in flames in a densely populated residential and commercial area of northeast Philadelphia. <br/>