Some witnesses said the pilot appeared to deliberately turn the plane toward the vacant lot to avoid hitting people in the area, but Plagens said it was too early to say whether the pilot could control the plane.
The source said the flames destroyed the steering cables above the front cargo hold that control the plane's movement.
But when his wingtip touched the surface, he lost control and the plane apparently flipped, coming to rest on its back.
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The altitude at which the co-pilot handed control of the plane to his colleague was below the minimum altitude considered safe to continue final descent.
Stressing that it was too soon to speculate about the cause of Wednesday's crash, he said the pilot appeared to have control of the plane a long way down its approach to the airport.
But the simulator pilots were unable to maintain control of the plane all the way through to landing.
Pentagon officials said it was five minutes after the time of impact before the mayday call was issued, indicating the pilot was struggling to regain control of the crippled plane.
York had a broken wrist and other injuries that investigators believe resulted from the pilot trying to free himself to regain control of the plane as it plummeted, according to the report.
"Hey, that Japan Air may know it but they have fuel spewing out the leftward wing quite a bit, " the pilot of another plane told the control tower, which radioed the JAL crew and halted takeoff.
It will center on the site where United Flight 93 crashed after passengers apparently wrested control of the plane from the hijackers.
It's deploying another General Atomics plane known as the Sky Warrior, which takes a greater degree of the plane's control out of the hands of humans.
But even those statistics may or may not include incidents in which the crew requested that local law enforcement meet the plane and take control of a passenger, an FAA spokeswoman said.
Several family members of passengers previously have described cell phone conversations saying there might be an attempt to retake control of the plane.
An official has said there was some shouting, but it is not clear who was in control of the plane before it crashed.
Several relatives of those who died on United Flight 93, whose passengers tried to wrest control of the plane before it crashed in Shanksville, Pa.
It helps to control the angle of the plane's nose during flight.
This intuitive interface provides the driver with complete control while keeping his eyes safely above the cowl plane, using a windshield heads-up display (HUD) for minimal driving distraction.
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The disk severed all the plane's hydraulic lines, virtually cutting off all steering and speed control.
Enter the cockpit of a fighter plane and you will be amazed by the myriad arrays of display panels and complex control systems.
The company also launched its first major initiative to build additional control plane technology into its network infrastructure.
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Before Musharraf's plane touched down, soldiers had taken control of the airport and the radio and television stations, and put a number of cabinet ministers under house arrest.
Paul Wellstone in a plane crash Friday has major implications on who will control the closely divided Senate, where his Democratic party clings to power by a single vote.
Martha Heredia was arrested late Wednesday as she was about to board a plane to New York, said Frank Duran, the National Drug Control Agency's director for the city of Santiago.
Tragedy vaulted him to control after a hijacked plane crashed into Alger's offices on the 93rd floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, killing Fred Alger's brother David, then in charge of the firm, along with most of the staff.
The plane had just departed Teterboro Airport en route to Georgia when it began spiraling out of control at about 17, 000 feet and crashed on a wooded median on Interstate 287 near Morristown.
AeroVironment's remote-control attack plane may be small, but it represents a big shift taking place in the U.S. military: Today's defense robotics are more focused on killing and less dependent on humans than ever before.
Fact is, any Air Force plane transporting the U.S. president gets the Air Force One designation for air traffic control purposes.
He said air traffic control contacted the pilot after noticing an unusual manoeuvre minutes after take-off and the pilot said his plane had hit a vulture.
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