A four-blade propeller with part of the engine of a turbo-prop cargo aircraft sheared off as the plane landed at Shannon Airport on Monday. It tore through the side of the fuselage and out through the roof, narrowly missing the three-man crew and the three staff passengers on board.
The two black boxes containing the flight voice and data recorders were taken to Dublin for decoding yesterday by two inspectors from the Air Accident Investigation Unit of the Department of Public Enterprise.
Mr John Hughes and Mr Frank Russell completed their preliminary on-site investigation yesterday. They interviewed the crew of the aircraft and the Air Traffic Control officers.
The main damage was caused when the four-engined Lockheed Electra L-188 Channel Express aircraft made a first attempt to land with a full load of cargo from Dublin.
An emergency call went out and fire engines and ambulances made for the main runway when the badly-damaged aircraft came in for its second landing attempt. By this time it had lost one set of propellers and a large part of an engine and, on the same side, the damaged number four engine had stopped. The number 2 engine on the other side lost half its power when the ends of the propeller blades were bent.
It is believed all damage occurred when three propellers struck the runway at the first landing attempt.
A witness said: "I knew there was something wrong as the aircraft circled in over the industrial estate. It could be seen that there was no propeller on one engine and there was black smoke gushing out of the two engines on the other side."
This, it was explained, was due to the high thrust necessary from the 11/2 surviving engines needed to keep the aircraft aloft. The American pilot, Capt Dale Lee (36), displayed remarkable skill as he steered the crippled aircraft in to land at the second attempt.
Debris from the aircraft was scattered over the approach to the runway, which was closed for an hour until tractors towed it away.