Investigators probing the fatal crash of a Boeing 747 cargo plane in Canada said on Friday that the plane's tail hit the runway twice during take-off and then broke off when the jet crashed into a mound of earth.
All seven people on board the Ghanaian-registered aircraft were killed when it crashed while lifting off from the Canadian city of Halifax early on Thursday. The jet belonged to MK Airlines.
Bill Fowler of the Transportation Safety Board said the plane's tail first hit the ground 250 metres (yards) from the end of the runway and then again some 80 metres further on.
"The indication is there was prolonged contact of the aft fuselage with the runway and off the end of the runway," he told reporters in Halifax.
The plane briefly left the ground before striking the mound -- or berm -- at the end of the runway.
"There is an indication that the aircraft was slightly airborne. In other words, the scrape trail disappears just a few hundred feet before the berm," Fowler said.
The tail snapped off on impact and the rest of the fuselage ploughed through a wood before coming to rest in a rock quarry and catching fire.
Fowler declined to speculate on what had caused the plane's tail to hit the runway. The plane, carrying a cargo of seafood and tractors, was headed for Spain.
