HALIFAX, Nova Scotia The deadly crash of Swissair Flight 111 into the Atlantic Ocean off Canada occurred as the jet manoeuvred to reduce altitude and dump fuel in a desperate attempt to reach Halifax Airport, Canadian investigators said. According to excerpts from the recorded conversation between the doomed jet's flight crew and air traffic controllers in Moncton, New Brunswick, at the height of the emergency, the MD-11 airliner with 229 people aboard was heading northeast at an altitude of 33,000 feet about 70 nautical miles from Halifax when the crew radioed it had smoke in the cockpit.

The jet later plunged into the Atlantic just off Canada's east coast and near the fishing hamlet of Peggy's Cove on Wednesday night during a flight from New York to Geneva, killing everyone on board. Swissair 111 heavy is declaring pan pan pan. We have smoke in the cockpit, request deviate immediate right turn to a convenient place, I guess Boston, the flight crew radioed at about 9:14 P.M. (0114 GMT). Would you prefer to go into Halifax? the air traffic controller asked.

The crew replied in the affirmative and turned left, northward toward Halifax airport. In providing the excerpts, Vic Gerden, chief investigator for the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference on Saturday that ground radar showed the jet was about 300 nautical miles beyond Boston. But laden with fuel after having taken off from New York's John F. Kennedy airport, the jet was too high and too heavy to make a beeline for Halifax. The three-engine airliner weighed about 230 metric tons, whereas its maximum permissible landing weight was 200 metric tons.

So it had approximately 30 (metric) tons of fuel in excess of the maximum landing weight, Gerden said. It would have taken probably in the vicinity of 12 minutes of flying to dump that amount of fuel. (Reuter)