An aerial view of the crash site shows the wreckage of the plane and what little is left of a home on Long Street in the hamlet of Clarence Center, northeast of Buffalo, N.Y.An aerial view of the crash site shows the wreckage of the plane and what little is left of a home on Long Street in the hamlet of Clarence Center, northeast of Buffalo, N.Y. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News/Associated Press)

The Continental Airlines commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., last week went to full power in an attempt to regain airspeed in the final seconds before it went down, a U.S. federal aviation official said Sunday.

Steve Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board said the aircraft's flight data recorder shows that the autopilot disengaged and the engine power was advanced to full 20 seconds before the recording ended.

Investigators are examining flight data and voice recordings taken inside the Toronto-built Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop to try to determine why it crashed, killing all 49 people on board and one person inside a house in Clarence Center, outside of Buffalo.

Partial passenger list released

Also Sunday, Colgan Air, the company operating Flight 3407 for Continental, released a partial list of the passengers and crew aboard the plane when it went down.

The company said it had contacted the families of each victim to get their OK to publish the list. More than half agreed.

Many of the passengers were already known, including Don McDonald, a Canadian returning home to Fort Erie, Ont., from a business trip.

Other victims included human rights researcher Alison Des Forges, who documented the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; Beverly Eckert, whose husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001; and two members of jazz musician Chuck Mangione's band, Gerry Niewood and Coleman Mellett.

The pilots of the doomed plane discussed "significant" ice buildup on their wings and windshield amid misty weather just before crashing Thursday night.

Chealander said the aircraft's de-icing system was turned on 11 minutes after departure from Newark, N.J., and remained on for the rest of the flight.

Questions have been raised about why the plane was flying on autopilot during icy conditions.

The NTSB recommends that in these circumstances, pilots fly a plane manually so they have a better feel for how it may be changing in flight because of the ice.

However, Chealander said the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has not yet made it a rule that the autopilot must be disengaged when ice builds up.

He said Bombardier, the aircraft's manufacturer, recommends in the flight manual that the autopilot not be used in "severe icing conditions."

Chealander said when the flight left Newark, the crew was told that the weather in Buffalo was "light to moderate icing," with snow and light mist and visibility of 4.8 kilometres.

"It was really not a bad weather day," he said.

"Thus far we haven't determined that it's severe icing. So far, we see that everything seemed to be normal in using the autopilot."

Chealander said radar data shows the aircraft fell about 240 metres in five seconds shortly before impact.

Plane belly-flopped onto house

On Saturday, Chealander said that contrary to earlier reports from witnesses, the plane had not nosedived but landed flat on the house.

He said Flight 3407 was cleared to land on a runway in Buffalo pointing to the southwest, but the plane was pointing to the northeast when it crashed in the residential area.

The NTSB said there was almost no forward momentum as the belly of the aircraft crash-landed, shortly before it was due to land in Buffalo.

One minute before impact, the crew lowered the landing gear. Twenty seconds later, they adjusted the flaps, a move meant to provide lift as the aircraft slowed. At that point, the plane began to experience "severe pitch and roll" and dropped from radar, Chealander said.