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SECOND AIRLINER TO CRASH IN OCEAN IN 24 HOURS!!!

Airliner Crashes Off Coast Near L.A.

By JEFF WILSON Associated Press Writer

OXNARD, Calif. (AP) -- An Alaska Airlines jet carrying 65 passengers and five crew members from Mexico to San Francisco crashed Monday in the Pacific Ocean after reporting mechanical difficulties.

Flight 261 from Puerto Vallarta was reported down 20 miles northwest of the Los Angeles airport about 3:45 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said. The Coast Guard said several bodies were recovered from the site, but there were no reports of survivors.

A Coast Guard helicopter, a Navy airplane and small boats were searching an area where pieces of wreckage rolled in swells off Point Mugu after darkness had descended on the ocean. Commercial squid boats, which have high-power lights, were illuminating the area.

Several bodies were found by 6 p.m., said Lt. Chuck Diorio at Coast Guard headquarters in Long Beach.

``Right now they are searching for survivors,'' said Coast Guard Lt. Jeanne Reincke.

The plane was an MD-83, part of the MD-80 series aircraft built by McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing, said John Thom, a spokesman for Boeing's Douglas aircraft unit. The downed plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines in 1992, Thom said.

The jet's crew had reported mechanical difficulties and asked to land at Los Angeles, said Ron Wilson, a spokesman for the San Francisco airport. The flight was scheduled to continue to Seattle after San Francisco.

``Radar indicates it fell from 17,000 feet and then was lost from radar,'' Wilson told KRON-TV in San Francisco.

Cynthia Emery, FAA flight operations officer in Seattle, confirmed the number of passengers and crew.

Alaska Airlines, which has a distinctive image of an Eskimo painted on the tails of its planes, has an excellent safety record. It has built itself into a western power by serving more than 40 cities in Alaska, Canada, Mexico and five Western states.

The weather was clear at the crash site, and the water typically has a temperature in the low 50s this time of year. The water is between 300 and 600 feet deep.

The National Transportation Safety Board was assembling a team of investigators in Washington, D.C., and planned to send them to the crash site late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, spokesman Pat Cariseo said.

On Sunday, a Kenya Airways flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take off from Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The Airbus 310 carried 10 crew members and 169 passengers. At least 10 people survived.

Last Oct. 31, EgyptAir Flight 990 plummeted into the ocean 60 miles south of the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. All 217 people aboard the Boeing 767 were killed.

Alaska Airlines, based in Seattle, operates several flights from Puerto Vallarta, a resort on Mexico's Pacific coast, to San Jose, San Francisco and other California cities.

The airline had two fatal accidents in the 1970s, both in Alaska, according to Airsafe.com, a Web site that tracks plane crashes.

In 1971, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 727-100 approaching Juneau crashed into a mountain slope after the crew had received misleading navigational information. All 104 passengers and seven crew members and were killed.

In 1976, one passenger was killed when a 727 overran the runway after landing in Ketchikan.

According to the NTSB, an Alaska Airlines 737-400 flying from Seattle-Tacoma to Juneau, carrying 140 passengers and five crew members, sustained ``substantial damage'' during landing at Juneau in 1998. There were no injuries and no probable cause was listed on the report.

The previous year, an Alaska Airlines DC-9-82 landing at Seattle-Tacoma ran into problems when its nose landing gear collapsed, according to the NTSB. Nineteen passengers sustained minor injuries, the report said.