Search Continues For 3rd Person Killed In Texas Amazon Cargo Plane Crash
ANAHUAC, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Authorities continue to scour the shallow waters of Trinity Bay, near the southeast coast of Houston, for clues as to what caused a Boeing 767 cargo plane carrying Amazon packages to nose-dive into the shallow water.
All three men onboard the flight, traveling from Miami to Bush Intercontinental Airport, were killed.
A north wind aided searchers by exposing more of the three-quarter-mile debris field left Saturday when Flight 3591, which Atlas Air was operating for Amazon, disintegrated on impact in Trinity Bay, about 35 miles east of the city, a sheriff said Sunday night.
Crews using airboats and helicopters circled the crash scene, where white chunks of fuselage could be seen above long grass. The muddy landscape has made the process "painstaking," National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwal said. Deputies and investigators from the FBI and NTSB have been gathering human remains and looking for the plane's black box, which records flight data and voices in the cockpit.
Emergency workers recovered two bodies, one on Saturday and the other Sunday, and sent them to a medical examiner's office for autopsies. The body of Captain Rick Blakely has yet to be found.
A statement from Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne says he was notified Monday evening that the bodies recovered have been identified as those of Conrad Aska, the 44-year-old first officer and co-pilot of Atlas Air Flight 3591, and Sean Archuleta, a jump-seat passenger.
Archuleta, a captain with Mesa Airlines, had been getting a lift back to his home in the Houston area, his friend told the Houston Chronicle. The 36-year-old was a new father and weeks away from starting his "dream" job flying for United Airlines, Don Dalton, Archuleta's roommate, told the paper.
Archuleta's wife lives in Colombia and is "devastated" by his death, Dalton said.
Atlas Air said in a Sunday statement that it has established a program to support the families of the dead and that it has a team, including CEO Bill Flynn, at the crash site to assist investigators.
The last crash involving a large cargo plane in the United States was in 2016, according to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. The landing gear of a FedEx flight collapsed after touching down at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, causing the left wing of the McDonnell Douglas MD-10-10F to catch fire. The plane was badly damaged, but the two crew members were able to evacuate, the spokesman said.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
