Search For Jet Crash Survivors Called Off Dominican Officials Defend Decision To Use Boeing 757

The search for survivors ended Thursday as Dominican officials defended the safety precautions taken by a tiny airline whose rented plane plunged into the Atlantic with 189 people aboard.

The U.S. Navy said it hoped to recover flight-data recorders from three-quarters of a mile underwater to provide clues to the cause of Tuesday night’s crash.

Investigators’ work was complicated by conflicting reports over the Boeing 757’s flight readiness, why it was substituted for another plane an hour before flight time and even who was responsible for operating the plane.

After a two-day search of a 500-square-mile area, hopes evaporated for finding any survivors or more bodies in the crash area, about 12 miles northeast of this beach resort. The U.S. Coast Guard ended its search at sundown.

Authorities on Thursday lowered their count of bodies rescue workers in inflatable boats had retrieved from the ocean from 129 to 78. The German ambassador, Edmund Duckwitz, said the reduction came after officials had a chance to analyze more closely the remains recovered from the sea.

None of the bodies have been identified, Duckwitz said.

The 176 passengers and 13 crew aboard Alas Nacionales flight 301 were headed to Berlin and Frankfurt. Most passengers were German tourists. Eleven crew members were Turkish, and two were Dominican.

Equipped with medical and dental records, German forensic scientists were en route to help identify victims. Friends and family members, meanwhile, waited at the dock for word of their loved ones.

Joselin Ramos, 23, wept as she spoke of her missing sister, Francia, a flight attendant. “She was just trying to make a living,” she said.

Dominican authorities met with officials from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board to begin the investigation.

Yapur Duarte, the Alas operations director at the Puerto Plata airport, said his airline - registered in the United States as Alas de Transporte Internacional - decided not to use a Boeing 767 as scheduled only one hour before flight time Tuesday night.

He said the switch was made because there were too few passengers to use the 767, which holds about 300 people. The 757 holds 224 passengers.

But Gen. Hector Roman Torres, chief of the Dominican aviation agency, said Thursday the 767 was grounded because it had problems with its hydraulics system and landing gear.

Lt. Col. Manuel Mendez Segara, a top Dominican aviation official, denied a German television report that a flight mechanic had tried to warn Alas not to fly the 757.

“It is not true and there were no engine problems,” Mendez said.

Roman also said the 757 “was in optimum condition.”

Alas had leased the plane from Birgenair, a Turkish-owned company, along with a crew.

At a news conference Thursday in Frankfurt, the head of Birgenair, Cetin Birgen, rejected any blame for the crash. He said his jets undergo standard servicing.

The jet that crashed had last been checked by Turkish mechanics on Tuesday, he said. The pilot had 25,000 hours of flight experience, 1,857 of that in Boeing 757s.