Military Aircraft to Bring Sinai Soldiers Home : Two Senators Seek Probe of Charter Policy in Wake of Crash That Killed 256

The Army will use military aircraft to bring home the remaining members of the 101st Airborne Division from their peacekeeping duty in the Sinai Peninsula this week, canceling a flight scheduled for Arrow Air, the Pentagon said Saturday.

A Pentagon spokesman said the decision to switch from Arrow to two Air Force C-141 transports was made to alleviate “distress and concern” on the part of the approximately 250 soldiers, whose tour of duty is ending, along with their families, and did not reflect specific safety considerations.

Asked to comment on the Pentagon’s decision to use the Air Force planes, Arrow spokesman Robin Matell said that the change was made after Thursday’s crash, in which 256 people died, “because we did not have an aircraft that would be suitable to meet that scheduled commitment.” Matell also confirmed that the company’s DC-8 which crashed Thursday in Canada had encountered mechanical difficulties earlier this year and had been involved in two aborted takeoffs in the last six months.

Tail Struck Runway

Matell said that one of the incidents occurred Nov. 15 on a flight carrying 99 Marine reservists from Grand Rapids, Mich., when the tail of the plane struck the runway. Blame for the accident was placed on a loading problem that apparently made the plane tail-heavy. The flight continued after passengers and cargo were moved forward, Matell said.

He said that an earlier incident took place July 28 at Toledo, Ohio, when the plane, carrying Kentucky and Ohio National Guardsmen, suffered unspecified mechanical problems on a takeoff from Toledo but later flew without further difficulty to West Germany.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Tennessee’s two Democratic senators, Albert Gore Jr. and Jim Sasser, called for a congressional investigation into the use of chartered aircraft to transport military personnel. In a letter to the General Accounting Office, they questioned whether the Arrow plane had been properly maintained and whether the Air Force’s safety reviews for charters were adequate.

Want Questions Answered

“There are growing indications that the Arrow Air DC-8 which crashed on Thursday did not follow proper procedures for the prevailing weather conditions, and that it may not have had satisfactory maintenance in the recent past,” Gore said in a written statement provided to the Associated Press in Nashville.

“In light of the magnitude of this tragedy, those matters raise questions that simply must be answered,” the letter said.

The Arrow-owned DC-8 involved in Thursday’s accident was on takeoff from a refueling stop at Gander, Newfoundland, when it crashed. The cause of the crash has not been determined.

In Los Angeles, a veteran Trans World Airlines mechanic who has worked on one of the planes in Arrow’s fleet, a Boeing 707 jet, raised questions about maintenance procedures followed by Arrow and other supplemental airlines that operate charter flights.

The TWA mechanic, Peter Regina, said in a telephone interview that he and other TWA mechanics worked on Arrow’s 707 for a day and a half in 1984 at his airline’s maintenance center at Los Angeles International Airport.

Landing Gear Bearing

The aircraft was turned over to TWA for correction of what appeared to be a problem with a landing gear warning light, and mechanics determined instead that a main bearing in the landing gear had worn out.

“One of the main wheels almost fell off,” said Regina, who added that he has worked for TWA for 20 years.

Mounting the airplane on jacks, the mechanics found that the landing gear was not retracting fully. The pilot’s log, Regina said, indicated that the plane had made “several flights” since the warning light first indicated a problem, about a week earlier.

“We started looking around. You could see the landing gear had not been greased. It was dirty,” he said.

Asked how long it had been since grease was applied to the landing gear, he said, “Who knows how long? Maybe a year.”

Regina’s account was repeated by another TWA mechanic, who spoke on the condition that he not be further identified.

Brake Work Done

The second mechanic said that additional work was performed on the airplane’s brakes.

He said that while nothing became dislodged that would have prevented the landing gear from working properly and absorbing the punishing load of a four-engine jet landing on a runway, the inboard rear wheel of the four-wheel right main landing gear was “loose on the axle.”

This problem would not necessarily be serious immediately, he said, but if a wheel bearing failure was not corrected, he said, “the wheel would have departed the aircraft.”

“This was one situation in which we were lucky in catching a lot of things before they became problems,” he said.

The mechanic said that incidents such as those involving the Arrow 707 “are very rare.”

But Regina said that other jets flown by supplemental airlines and brought to TWA for routine maintenance often require four to five days of work because of their run-down condition.

Arrow’s Record Defended

Arrow spokesman Matell said he did not know about the incident Regina described.

“We have never flown an airplane that is not completely safe to fly,” he said, adding that “we continue to be in complete compliance with all FAA rules and regulations.” Arrow is one of 17 airlines--including nine so-called “supplemental carriers” that fly mostly charter trips rather than regularly scheduled passenger flights--with which the Military Airlift Command maintains contracts for passenger and cargo transport.

The Military Airlift Command was assigned the job of bringing home the next contingent from the Sinai on a flight originating in Cairo on Wednesday, Army Lt. Col. Arnold Williams, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

Because the U.S. soldiers in the Sinai force are assigned to the Multinational Force and Observers mission--an 11-nation, 2,600-soldier unit--the international organization’s office in Rome, rather than the Military Airlift Command, is generally responsible for their transportation.

Williams said that any permanent shift from Arrow Air aircraft to military or other aircraft would not be made until Canadian authorities have finished investigating the causes of Thursday’s accident.