Memorial For Flight 261 Victims

Less than a week after the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, it was in the minds of many who live near where the plane went down. Even though no one on the flight was from the Los Angeles area, CBS News' Steve Futterman reports, there is an amazing outpouring of love coming from this quiet beach community.

Dozens of local residents, seeking solace of their own, paddled into the ocean Saturday to throw flowers into the waters that claimed the lives of 88 people. Dolphins jumped in the water nearby.

Meanwhile, other problems are reported with the Alaska Airlines fleet: A jet bound from Reno to Seattle turned back Saturday night after experiencing stabilizer problems, and there's a report of federal investigations into a maintenance facility.

As relatives and strangers struggle to come to grips with this loss, investigators continued working to learn the cause of the ill-fated flight. Out on the water, Navy vessels using side-scanning sonar have nearly finished locating wreckage on the ocean floor. The plane's tail is in many pieces, some less than three feet long. One piece of fuselage is described as four or five windows long. Officials say the pieces have to be retrieved very carefully, so evidence won't be destroyed.

Investigators have begun focusing on two unidentified loud noises heard by the flight crew before the plane crashed.

Here is new information from the cockpit voice recorder, as provided by John Hammerschmidt, a member of the NTSB:

• The first conversations recorded on the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) involve communications between the flight crew and Alaska Airlines maintenance facility personnel in Seattle regarding the stabilizer trim system of the aircraft.
• Approximately 12 minutes before the end of the recording, the airplane experienced an apparent loss of vertical control. The crew recovered from this condition in approximately one-and-one-half minutes.
• After recovery from this loss of vertical control, a flight attendant advised the crew that she had heard a loud noise in the rear of the aircraft. The crew acknowledged that they had heard it, too.
• Slightly more than one minute before the end of the recording, a loud noise can be heard on the recording and the airplane appears to go out of control. No stall warning was heard during this event.

Complete CBS Video Coverage of Flight 261

Sources say the pilots tried emergency procedures, turning on and off motors, trying to regain control of the stabilizer, but their efforts may have made the problem worse. The stabilizer moved to an extreme position, ultimately pushing the plane into a nose-down dive.

There's no question the pilots faced a problem that just kept getting worse, and it is possible they did everything right and still couldn't save it. The flight data recorder may reveal whether the crew and passengers of Flight 261 ever had a chance.

Nobody is blaming the pilots for the crash, but investigators want to know if the pilots could have landed immediately instead of trying to fix what they called a "stabilizer jam."