Doomed UPS Plane Sent No Distress Signal

The UPS cargo plane that crashed yesterday near Birmingham, Ala., didn't send out a distress signal prior to the disaster, ABC News reports. "We were told that there was no distress signal emitted from the airplane itself, and there were no calls for the airport or the control tower to assume that they were in any trouble," says Birmingham's mayor. The cause of the crash remains unclear; officials haven't yet been able to get the black-box recordings from the 2004-built Airbus 300.

Meanwhile, one of the two pilots' identities has emerged: Shanda Fanning, 37, of Tennessee, had been flying since her teenage years, the Tennesseean reports. Her brother-in-law confirmed her identity. She was "an excellent pilot" and "a good ol’ Southern country girl," says a friend and former flight teacher. (More Tennessee stories.)