Newport Air Crash Inquiry Focuses on Possible Pilot Error

A federal air safety investigator said Wednesday that he has shifted his focus to possible human error as a key factor in the March 31 crash of a twin-engine Piper Aerostar in Newport Beach.

The plane slammed into a tennis court at the Newport Beach Tennis Club minutes after taking off from John Wayne Airport, narrowly missing several tennis players on the ground and killing all five people aboard--a vacationing family from Alberta, Canada.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jeff Rich said that the Aerostar’s roll down the runway at John Wayne Airport was too slow and took up twice as much space as it should have, and then the plane turned south without sufficient airspeed, leading investigators to speculate that pilot Anthony Deis made “incorrect” decisions under pressure.

Mechanic Error Cited

Rich also disclosed that the same Ohio mechanic who had installed a fuel line injector nozzle in the wrong location in the plane’s right engine in 1983 made the same mistake on an Aerostar that crashed earlier this year in Louisiana, killing the pilot. “I became quite concerned and notified the Federal Aviation Administration,” Rich said.

“We’re not an enforcement agency,” Rich said of the NTSB. “It’s up to the FAA to deal with the mechanic.” Rich said he did not know what, if any, action had been taken in connection with the mechanic.

FAA officials were unavailable.

“Mechanical problems alone did not cause the plane to end up in the tennis court,” Rich said. “Performance charts for this aircraft show that losing an engine would not by itself cause the plane to be unflyable. . . . But the laws of aerodynamics and physics are unmerciful. If you lift off when you shouldn’t, or turn the plane without the required airspeed, you will drop. We see it all the time.”

Rich said that interviews with witnesses at the airport indicated that Deis had insufficient engine power during his roll down the runway and was going too slowly. Asked if Deis could have mistakenly attributed the lack of power to a heavy passenger load, Rich said: “I don’t know.” But Rich said ground observers heard an engine sputtering even as the plane lifted off.

Another unanswered question, Rich added, is whether Deis knew how much runway he had used up and how much remained.

He said such questions and factors such as Deis’ training and experience, and the fact that “his adrenaline was flowing,” must be weighed before the NTSB in Washington can conclude that Deis should have decided to abort the takeoff or fly straight ahead over Upper Newport Bay instead of turning south over Eastbluff.

‘Just Report Facts’

“That’s the human factor,” Rich said. “I don’t draw any conclusions. . . . I just report facts.”

Rich said that although Deis had been certified by Canadian authorities to fly an Aerostar, pilots’ skill and knowledge of emergency procedures deteriorate quickly after exams “unless they practice frequently.”

Rich said that traces of a foam seal sucked into the right engine’s turbocharger from an air intake door have been found in the fuel injector nozzle, which was attached to the engine’s air-mixing box at the wrong location.

“It’s pretty clear how the engine problem developed, but, unfortunately, that’s not the end of it,” Rich said.

Last month, Rich had disclosed that traces of the seal were found in the turbocharger, but the nozzle had not yet been checked.