US aviation safety experts in Malaysia to help investigate plane crash

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): US aviation safety experts on Monday helped search for clues at the site of a Malaysian plane crash near the capital that killed all eight people on board and two on the ground.

The Beechcraft Model 390 aircraft exploded into a fireball on impact when it crashed Thursday on a road in Selangor state west of Kuala Lumpur.

All eight people on board — six passengers and two flight crew — as well as two motorists on the four-lane road were killed, according to the police.

Investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Bureau, Federal Aviation Administration and the aircraft manufacturer were seen Monday picking through the wreckage.

“They are already here this morning,” local police chief Mohamad Iqbal Ibrahim told AFP.

The 12-member US team also flew a drone over the crash site.

The plane’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) has been recovered and was being analyzed by Malaysian air accident investigators.

The CVR records what happens in the cockpit, including the final conversations of the flight crew and other sounds.

Like some other small planes, the aircraft did not have a flight data recorder, Malaysian police chief Razarudin Husain said Friday.

The plane took off from the northern resort island of Langkawi and was approaching Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Selangor at the time of the crash.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said earlier that the plane had been cleared to land but “veered to the right of the landing flight path” before it crashed.

In September 1977, a Japan Airlines plane bound for Singapore crashed near the site of Thursday’s disaster. The crash killed 34 of the 79 passengers and crew on board.