The cockpit voice recorder was not working on a medical transport plane that crashed in Philadelphia in January and likely had not been working for several years, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report issued Thursday. The NTSB also confirmed that the flight crew made no distress calls to air traffic control.
The medical transportation plane plummeted into a residential and commercial area within a minute of taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport and erupted into a fireball on the evening of Jan. 31. Officials said the crash killed all six people aboard the Learjet 55 and a seventh person who was inside a vehicle on the ground. At least two dozen others on the ground were injured, including a 10-year-old boy in a vehicle who was hit by debris while trying to protect his sister.
