The New Yorker:

On a calm, clear day, USAir Flight 427 suddenly nosedived into the earth, killing everyone on board. A team of investigators quickly assembled to sift through the rubble.

By Jonathan Harr

I—The Flight

On the evening of Wednesday, September 7, 1994, a Boeing 737 jetliner owned by USAir arrived at Bradley International Airport, just outside Hartford, Connecticut, on a regularly scheduled flight. Before its departure early the next morning, for Syracuse, it underwent a transit check—a routine maintenance inspection that occurs every seven days or thirty-five flight hours, whichever comes first, on all commercial 737 jetliners in the United States.

This particular plane, a 737-300 registered as N513AU, was one of two hundred and thirty 737s operated by USAir. Boeing had manufactured it in October, 1987, and USAir had then bought it for approximately thirty million dollars. During the previous seven years, it had logged nearly twenty-four thousand hours of flight time and more than fourteen thousand cycles, the term the industry applies to each takeoff and landing. As commercial airliners go, it was a relatively young plane. With regular maintenance, it could be expected to provide decades of service.

To all appearances, it was also in good health. The transit check, which consisted largely of a visual inspection of the aircraft and its fluid levels, revealed nothing untoward. Mechanics had previously noticed several small defects—a dent in the left aft inboard flap assembly, worn duct sliders on both the right and the left engine’s thrust reversers, and a worn mount bushing on one thrust reverser—but the wear on these parts was considered within normal limits, and repair of them had been deferred until the plane’s next stopover at a maintenance center. The maintenance log had also noted “soft and spongy” flooring in the aisle next to Row 5. This, too, had been deferred, but USAir’s mechanics did perform a temporary repair by inserting a sheet of aluminum under the carpeting.

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