Investigators yet to find cause of RP crash

Investigators yet to find cause of RP crash

MANILA (AP): Rescue teams have recovered the remains of 128 of the 131 people on board an Air Philippines jet which crashed on a resort island in the southern Philippines, the airline said on Friday.

However, investigators still "don't have a hint" of the cause of Wednesday's accident, the country's worst air disaster, Air Philippines spokeswoman Leah Sison said.

Many of the people on the plane, which crashed on Samal island as it was about to land in nearby Davao, were flying home for Easter holidays.

Air Philippines said relatives had identified 55 of the recovered remains, although many were badly mangled or charred.

Five British forensic experts have arrived to help Filipino experts identify the rest, Sison said. They have begun collecting blood samples from relatives for DNA tests, the airline said.

The pilot of the 22-year-old Boeing 737-200 reported low visibility minutes before the crash, according to an airport transcript obtained by The Associated Press. The Davao airport does not have full equipment for instrument landings.

The transcript also shows that air traffic controllers tried to hurry an earlier plane off the runway so the Air Philippines jet could land.

But the other plane remained on the runway, and the pilot of the doomed airliner was forced to circle and attempted to land from the opposite direction, slamming instead into a coconut grove on a 450-meter hill.

The plane "did not hit the ground sliding. It dropped from about 45 degrees," said Samal Mayor Rogelio Antalan.

Air Philippines says the plane passed a normal maintenance check before takeoff in Manila.

Searchers have recovered both of the plane's "black boxes" - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - which are being sent to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board for analysis.

According to the tower transcript, the pilot reported that visibility was only five kilometers as he approached the airport, considered marginal for visual landings, according to Philippine aviation officials. Visibility was reportedly worse over Samal island.

The crash was the third serious transportation accident in the country in a week, following two ferry sinkings that killed at least 148 people. Nevertheless, boats, planes and highways have remained packed this week in Asia's largest Catholic nation because of Easter holidays, when many Filipinos return to their hometowns.

Samal, a sparsely populated island about 980 kilometers southeast of Manila, is the location of several beach resorts.

Antalan said authorities will probably built a memorial at the crash site and an access road.

"Whether you like it or not, people will want to go there," he said. "We are a tourism island and we wanted people to come, but not this way."

Air Philippines, which began operations in 1996, is one of a number of new airlines created shortly after the industry's recent deregulation.

The country's worst previous air disaster was in 1998, when a Cebu Pacific DC-9 jet crashed into a fog-shrouded mountain in the southern Philippines, killing all 104 people aboard.