If you read this thread that I started on this topic originally, in fact specifically this subject, you'll understand why I am suspicious:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1050751/posts?page=206#206 Regarding the Pittsburgh 737-300 crash;
The jet that crashed outside Pittsburgh was a Boeing 737-300, a model nicknamed the "Quichewagon."
It's called that because it has computers that let the plane practically fly itself. Pilots who rely on the high-tech devices are less macho. They are "quiche-eaters."
The stubby two-engine plane has all the sex appeal of a four-door sedan. Other jets have mean-sounding nicknames like Mad Dog, Mega-Dog and Yard Dart, but the 737 names are wimpy: Fat Albert, Guppy, Fat Little Ugly Fellow, or FLUF.
It is dull but efficient, the world's most widely used airliner. As you read this, more than 700 are in the air. The plane accounts for 40 percent of the flights from Tampa International Airport, far more than any other plane.
The question facing Haueter was whether the Fat Little Ugly Fellow had a hidden flaw, a gremlin that had gone undetected since the first 737s began flying 30 years earlier. If there was a flaw, it would be like Russian roulette: Countless 737s could fly without a problem, but some day, another one would go down.
A lot was riding on the investigation: the safety of passengers boarding 737s every day; the fate of the airplane itself; the fortunes of USAir and Boeing; and the reputation of the NTSB.
Most crashes are solved within a few weeks, but this one would defy explanation. It would become one of the greatest mysteries in the history of aviation.
Haueter's detective work would require a combination of amazing science and luck. His team would explore everything from whether a hydraulic gadget failed to whether a terrorist blew up the plane to whether it crashed because a fat passenger stepped through the floor.
Finding the truth would be especially difficult because of the raw politics that intruded on the investigation. Boeing, in particular, would play hardball to keep the government from blaming its airplane.
It took 28 seconds for the plane to flip out of the sky and crash into the hill in Hopewell. It would take more than four years for the NTSB to decide if it could explain why.
* * *
The plane's black boxes – the voice and flight recorders that really are bright orange – were found a few hours after the crash and flown to Washington.
Technicians in the NTSB lab pried open the battered flight data recorder, transferred the data into a computer and zapped it back to the Holiday Inn in Pittsburgh within a few hours. The first person to see it was John Clark, a silver-haired NTSB engineer. He sat on the floor, studying the numbers on his laptop computer.
The newest recorders take more than 100 measurements of a flight, but the box in the USAir plane took only 11 basic measurements, giving only a rough picture of what happened to Flight 427. Still, the box gave Clark an important clue. The numbers for compass heading showed that at 6,000 feet above Hopewell, the nose of the 737 had abruptly moved left, like a car starting to skid sideways on wet pavement.
Many things can make a plane do that, but one was most likely: a sudden move by the rudder.
"There is something going on here with the yaw," Clark told Haueter. "It looks like this airplane had some type of rudder event."
It was an encouraging lead. But NTSB investigators have an old saying: Never believe anything you hear in the first 48 hours. The first few theories about a crash – the causes du jour – typically don't pan out.
Back in Washington, the voice recorder team was meeting in one of the safety board's listening rooms, replaying the final words of pilots Emmett and Germano. The rooms have thick walls and insulated ceilings so screams and dying words won't be overheard by people passing in the hallway.
The tape from the USAir plane made one thing clear: The pilots never understood what was going wrong.
The engineers played the recording over and over. And over and over came Germano's dying words: "What the hell is this?"