PLANE CARRIED UNAUTHORIZED CARGO : FAA SAYS VALUJET FORBIDDEN TO TRANSPORT HAZARDOUS OXYGEN GENERATORS.

Byline: Matthew L. Wald The New York Times

ValuJet was not authorized to carry the chemical devices that investigators suspect started a fire or an explosion that may have brought down one of the airline's planes, with more than 100 people aboard, in the Everglades on Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday.

Investigators say they still do not know why the plane crashed. But they have assembled a strong circumstantial case that the chemical devices, called oxygen generators, were somehow triggered and so began generating heat and oxygen. If so, the generators may have ignited tires with which they shared a cargo hold. Similar generators have caused fires or explosions in the past.

Gregg Kenyon, a spokesman for ValuJet, declined to comment on the reports the plane was carrying the oxygen generators. ``I can say it is ValuJet policy that we do not accept hazardous materials for commercial carriage, but we are permitted by federal regulations to carry certain hazardous materials associated with the maintenance and operation of our fleet,'' he said.

In the days since the crash, the airline's officials have said that its safety record is good and that they are cooperating with the government's investigation into the accident.

Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board said the DC-9 jetliner that crashed had carried cargo of 50 to 60 oxygen generators, devices about the size of a small fire extinguisher that when activated combine two chemicals and give off oxygen, for use in passenger emergency masks. Like fire extinguishers, the generators have a shelf life; the shelf life of these had expired, so ValuJet, which owned them, was transporting them back to its base in Atlanta, the investigators said.

ValuJet's lack of authorization to carry the generators was disclosed by the FAA on Wednesday in a statement that said the airline had not had the appropriate training to haul hazardous material.

``As the airline elected not to carry hazardous materials, it is neither authorized nor equipped to do so,'' the statement said. ``ValuJet's FAA-approved training manuals require its staff to recognize the presence of hazardous materials so they can be refused.''

That ValuJet was not approved to carry hazardous materials was also mentioned in a Defense Department report in August. In that report, the Pentagon rejected ValuJet's application to become a military contractor, describing a number of shortcomings in the airline's operation.

The report said, for example, that the airline had incomplete and disorganized records and documentation for maintenance training, that it had no internal audit program and that supervisors were not adequately reviewing maintenance forms and other documents.

In early March, after ValuJet had made improvements, the Defense Department did accept the company as a contractor. But on Wednesday, in light of the crash, the department suspended it from doing business with the military for up to 30 days.

The crash Saturday killed all 110 people aboard. ValuJet initially released a manifest with 109 names: those of 104 passengers, 2 pilots and 3 flight attendants. But on Wednesday the airline said the passengers had also included a ``lap child,'' an infant whose name did not appear on the list.

Robert Francis, vice chairman of the safety board, said searchers at the scene of the crash had found a floor beam with what appeared to be soot on one side and none on the other; the next step is to determine exactly where the floor board was located before the crash, he said.

The jet's flight data recorder was found at the scene Monday, and Francis has said it shows ``an anomaly'' in which the on-board instruments recorded a sudden drop in altitude and air speed soon before the crash. But data from ground-based radar showed no such drop. Experts said that both the altimeter and the air-speed indicator worked by measuring the difference in pressure between the inside of the plane and the outside; if there was a sudden jump in pressure inside, they could produce readings like the ones captured by the flight data recorder.

But there is still no sign of the cockpit voice recorder, which investigators say would be extremely helpful in establishing more conclusively what happened. There is another clue, though; the co-pilot radioed to ground controllers shortly before the crash that the cockpit and the cabin were filling with smoke.

On Wednesday, slogging through the murky water and mud of the Everglades, searchers found the log book of one of the pilots, part of the windshield and part of the control column, Francis said. ``The pieces I saw of the cockpit are not very large pieces,'' he said.

No remnants of the oxygen generators have been found, but a safety board team in Atlanta found copies of the cargo manifest for the flight indicating their presence in the forward cargo hold, under the first-class section. In the same hold were listed three airplane tires, belonging to another airline.

The kind of oxygen generator that the plane was carrying is meant to supply oxygen to three or four masks for 15 minutes. Installed in a plane, they are not considered hazardous material. But these oxygen generators, not installed, were instead cargo.

``It's analogous to jet fuel,'' said a senior FAA official, who spoke at a briefing in Washington on condition that he not be identified by name. ``If it's in the wing tanks, that's fine. If you put it in a drum and want to put it in the belly of an airplane, it's not fine.''

Airlines routinely carry many kinds of hazardous materials, but to do so they must give their cabin, cockpit and ground personnel extra training, and develop emergency plans, all of which cost money.

An airline can be fined up to $25,000 a day per incident for carrying such materials unauthorized; willful miscarrying of such material is punishable by up to $500,000 and five years in prison.

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Photo

Photo: Family members of crash victims leave a Florida hote l Wednesday.

Associated Press