A week later federal investigators are still trying to piece together what went wrong. Only one engine survived the impact intact, and the scattered remains of the victims–now undergoing tests–may be too damaged to yield useful clues. For now, the best theory is that the plane suffered a sudden loss of cabin pressure, suffocating the crew and passengers and exposing them to icy minus-70-degree air. The Air Force, which dispatched the F-16s to monitor the Learjet, said the small craft’s windshield was frosted over.
Late last week officials revealed that there had been at least three other seemingly similar crashes involving Lears since the 1970s. In one, a Learjet flew from Vienna toward Iceland in 1983 before plunging into the ocean. The cause is not known. In 1990, a Learjet crashed in Ohio soon after takeoff. Controllers reported that the pilots sounded disoriented and had slurred speech–possibly indicating carbon-monoxide poisoning. Stumped, investigators concluded only that the crew became incapacitated and “lost control of the plane.” Since 1978, the FAA has issued three bulletins ordering fixes for potential pressurization and oxygen problems in different Learjet models. A spokesman for Bombardier, the Canadian company that owns Learjet, told NEWSWEEK that there is no evidence linking the previous crashes to last week’s disaster, and that the FAA-ordered fixes were for “much older” and “very different” planes. Investigators have now begun the tedious task of examining the remains of the plane, hoping that the aircraft itself will unravel the mystery of that long, silent flight.
