Inventor Cites Lack of Checklist in Detroit Crash
The Detroit plane crash that killed 156 people last month--the second-worst disaster in U.S. aviation history--might have been prevented if a simple cockpit safety checklist had been in the plane, the manufacturer of the checklist said.
Steve Meginnis, executive vice president of the Dexter-Wilson Corp., a Seattle firm that makes cockpit components and aircraft wiring, said he repeatedly has tried to interest air carriers in equipping commercial jets with his “mechanical lighted checklist.”
Only one carrier--American Airlines--uses the $500 device on its fleet of 356 airplanes. American is expected to install them also on the 37 planes it recently acquired in its merger with AirCal.
Meginnis said he invented the checklist about five years ago, after American Airlines asked the Boeing Co. to find and install a smaller, easier-to-use version of a similar device that was in use on their passenger planes.
“I believe the Northwest crash would not have happened if the mechanical checklist had been in the cockpit,” Meginnis said. “One of the critical functions it checks for is the flaps.”
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board have been trying to determine whether the pilot of the Northwest airliner, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, may have forgotten to lower the wing flaps and slats, a routine procedure that helps the plane gain lift, when he took off from Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Aug. 16.
That theory is supported by the flight data recorder--which indicated the flaps were not set for takeoff--and the cockpit voice recorder, which picked up no mention of checking off the position of the flaps.
Investigators are also checking to see if the crew may have disconnected a warning system that had gone off earlier.
Meginnis’ mechanical checklist is a small panel, about 6 inches wide and 5 inches high, that has a toggle switch and a blue light next to each of 10 aircraft functions that are considered critical to safe flying.
The device operates off the plane’s batteries but is independent of its operation. It is used as a backup with a longer, printed checklist of takeoff and landing procedures.
