USAIR JET'S RUDDER WAS SET INCORRECTLY

The rudder of a USAir jetliner was set wrongly before last week's fatal skid into the East River, and that could explain the drift the captain said led him to abort takeoff, according to investigators.

An airline spokesman and the National Transportation Safety Board, meanwhile, dismissed a report Wednesday that the crew of Flight 5050 had been drinking for five hours before getting into the cockpit.The NTSB said the rudder trim in the 737-400's cockpit, which holds the rudder steady, had been found in the full-left position.

"That would tend to want to move the plane to the left if he didn't do other things to compensate for it," Ted Lopatkiewicz, a NTSB spokesman in Washington, said of the pilot.

He said it would be the responsibility of either the captain or co-pilot to set the trim before takeoff.

"It clearly could have been one of the factors that led to the crash," said Peter Baron, who heads the National Center for Air Traffic Safety in New York, a non-profit consumer advocacy group.

The trim is on the pre-takeoff checklist that the captain and crew are supposed to go through, Baron said. But he added, "It's not the type of thing where you're going to get a warning horn if it was mis-set."

The effect of setting the rudder to the left would not become apparent until the plane built up speed during takeoff, he added.

Capt. Michael W. Martin told investigators he aborted the takeoff because the aircraft was moving left and he heard and felt a strange vibration.

Two passengers died in the Sept. 20 crash and 59 people survived. The plane was scheduled to fly to Charlotte, N.C.