Equipment failure and outdated navigational systems may have played a role in the jet crash that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. But Pentagon officials said Friday it was too early to say exactly what caused the accident.
Though details of the investigation were still sketchy, Defense Secretary William Perry told reporters it was likely that malfunctioning instruments were at least one factor in the crash.
Perry noted that visibility was “very, very poor” as the military version of the Boeing 737 veered off course in stormy weather and slammed into mountainous terrain during its approach to Cilipi airport near Dubrovnik.
“Evidently, there was some malfunction, because the hill that it hit was offset, perhaps a half kilometer or kilometer or so from the approach,” Perry said. “It was a classic sort of accident that good instrumentation should be able to prevent.”
Perry also suggested that other things went awry. “When you have an accident like this, it is almost always a case of several things (going) wrong simultaneously,” he said during a flight back from Egypt.
In Washington, Brown’s family and colleagues continued their mourning as President Clinton planted a dogwood tree on the White House lawn as a memorial to his friend and adviser.
Earlier Friday, Clinton placed several phone calls expressing sympathy to the families of the other victims, including U.S. businessmen and aides.
The president also named Mary Lowe Good, undersecretary of commerce for technology, acting commerce secretary.
Piecing together what happened before the crash has been difficult because the jet, apparently for budgetary reasons, lacked a technical-data recorder–the so-called black box.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Rick Scott, cautioned that talk about the accident’s cause was premature. “It’s dangerous to speculate at this stage,” he said. “The investigation will continue for some time to come.”
But attention was focused on the unsophisticated navigational system employed at Cilipi. U.S. and local officials said the airport was missing one piece of computerized precision landing equipment taken by the Yugoslav army in Croatia’s 1991 war that allows planes to land in any weather.
The jet was being guided by Cilipi’s low-frequency radio beacons. Such systems have been around for 50 years and are subject to interference from atmospheric disturbances.
