BY PAUL BARTON
Enquirer Washington Bureau
Comair Embraer EMB-120s are parked at the terminal on the day of the crash of Flight 3272.
(Patrick Reddy photo)
| ZOOM |
|
WASHINGTON -- For nearly a year before the fatal crash of Comair Flight 3272, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sat on information that could have helped prevent the accident, the Air Line Pilots Association charged Thursday night.
Flight 3272 crashed Jan. 9, 1997, on a flight from Cincinnati as it approached Detroit Metro Airport. Three crew members and 26 passengers died.
The aircraft was an Embraer EMB-120, a turboprop. No cause has been determined, but officials think icing may have contributed to the crash, as well as the crash of a similar plane near Roselawn, Ind., in 1994.
The pilots group specifically charges that critical information about problems with the plane's de-icing, autopilot and stall-warning systems were known by the FAA in early 1996 and not communicated to pilots.
Many of the problems were discussed in an internal FAA document reflecting information from previous crashes involving similar commuter aircraft, including the Roselawn crash.
"The handwriting was on the wall," said Capt. Mitchell Serber, in charge of investigating the accident for the pilots union.
"The opportunity was there for the FAA to take action to prevent the accident."
FAA officials could not be reached for comment Thursday night. The FAA, Capt. Serber said, has since taken corrective steps that "came at the expense of Comair 3272."
A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing on the crash is expected soon, although no date has been set.
The Air Line Pilots Association said its 65-page report, submitted to the NTSB this week, is based on information gathered while working with NTSB staff over the past 18 months.
"The Air Line Pilots Association feels that the FAA was in possession of information to several icing upsets (incidents of loss of control) of the Embraer 120 prior to the Comair accident and failed to exercise their oversight authority and take action which would have prevented the loss of Comair 3272," Capt. Serber said.
Key issues in the crash, he said, are the plane's autopilot and stall protection systems.
"The stall protection system is designed to give pilots advance warning that the wing is losing the ability to provide lift. It would not activate in a timely fashion if the wings were contaminated with ice," he said.
Other major issues, he said, concern the need to continuously operate the de-icing system in certain conditions and maintain minimum airspeeds to prevent stalls.
The manufacturer, he said, had learned much from previous accidents involving commuter airliners.
Embraer, he said, came up with new recommendations for operation of the EMB-120.
The problem, he said, is the absence of any FAA system that requires manufacturer bulletins on a plane's performance to be relayed to pilots.
"That's one of the things we are asking for," Capt. Serber said.
"The FAA should develop a formal method to make sure all manufacturer information is distributed to the appropriate operators and flight crews."
Meghan Glynn, spokeswoman for Erlanger, Ky.-based Comair, said of the allegations, "We're reviewing (the pilots') concerns and considering what submissions (to the NTSB), if any, we might want to make."
Although Capt. Serber said Comair also had some information from the manufacturer about potential problems with the plane, Ms. Glynn said nothing of a critical nature was kept from pilots. "Absolutely not," she said, adding, "Safety is our No. 1 concern."
Comair itself filed suit against Embraer in April, charging that it failed to disclose information about the aircraft's vulnerability in icy conditions.
Flight 3272 left Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport at 2:51 p.m. Jan. 9, 1997, and crashed a little more than an hour later.
The data recorder on the plane indicated a relatively normal descent until 3:54 p.m., when it suddenly dropped 4,000 feet, stalled and began a fatal roll.
