Yes, Paper Tiger, that was the one....
And the latest.....
Crash of U.S. Air Flight May Be Linked to Section of Tail
Friday January 17, 1:29 am ET
SAN FRANCISCO -- Investigators looking into last week's crash of a U.S. Airways commuter flight in Charlotte, N.C., suspect a tail part that may have been improperly installed years before helped jam the plane's flight controls, government and industry officials told Friday's Wall Street Journal.
The National Transportation Safety Board is trying to determine whether a sensor designed to record movements in the turboprop aircraft's tail was misaligned when it was installed on the plane as a retrofit item years earlier, these officials said. Investigators also suspect that routine maintenance work performed days before the crash to adjust the tension of a control cable played a role in the crash that killed all 21 people aboard.
While it is likely to be months before the safety board formally identifies the probable cause of the accident, the early findings suggest that there wasn't a systemic design problem with the Raytheon Co. twin-engine Beech 1900D model, or with the maintenance operations of Air Midwest, which was operating the flight for U.S. Airways . Air Midwest is a unit of Mesa Air Group Inc., based in Phoenix.
Preliminary data gathered by investigators point to some type of malfunction in the plane's elevator, the part of the tail that helps the plane climb and descend. Officials familiar with the probe said both of the aircraft's engines appeared to be operating normally, the takeoff roll was routine, and the nose of the plane lifted off without incident. But within a few seconds, the nose tipped up sharply, putting the plane into a fatal stall.