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Jet Crash Hearings Focus on a Failure to Communicate

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Breakdowns in communications were the focus of testimony at federal hearings that began here Wednesday on an Avianca Airlines jet flight that ran out of fuel and crashed into a hillside in Cove Neck, Long Island, last January.

The testimony indicated that the seriousness of the jetliner’s fuel shortage was never understood by controllers guiding the Boeing 707 toward New York’s Kennedy Airport.

“It was very confusing, what (the cockpit crew) was saying,” one of the controllers, Jeffrey Potash, told a National Transportation Safety Board panel. “There was nothing specifically said that there was a real problem here.”

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Tape recordings of the last conversations between the cockpit crew and the controllers show that when the co-pilot was asked if his fuel was sufficient for a final approach route recommended by controllers, he responded casually: “I guess so. Thank you very much.”

Seconds later, as the big plane shuddered and began to sink, that nonchalance was supplanted by grim urgency.

“We just lost two engines,” the co-pilot barked. “We need priority. Please.”

But it was too late.

Seventy-three of the 158 people aboard the big jet were killed as Flight 52 slammed into a wooded slope. Among those who died in the Jan. 25 crash were the entire cockpit crew--Pilot Laureano Caviedes, 51, his co-pilot, Mauricio Klotz, 28, and their 45-year-old flight engineer, Matias Moyano.

Investigators say the plane ran critically short of fuel as it approached New York from Colombia because of in-flight delays of almost 90 minutes spent in holding patterns over the Atlantic Ocean.

These “holds” were ordered by en route controllers because bad weather in the New York area was interrupting takeoffs and landings.

The NTSB says there is no indication that Moyano, the engineer of Flight 52, failed to calculate the plane’s fuel load or rate of consumption properly.

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Wednesday’s testimony, along with the cockpit recordings and transcripts of earlier NTSB interviews with controllers, indicates that the failures to communicate adequately about the fuel shortage occurred on three levels--between members of the cockpit crew, between the crew and the controllers and between the controllers themselves.

The pilot urged the co-pilot to tell controllers that there was a fuel emergency. The co-pilot assured the pilot that he had done so, but, in fact, Klotz had failed to use precise, federally approved terms such as “fuel emergency” or “minimum fuel,” which are readily understood by the controllers.

Controllers testified Wednesday that when Klotz simply requested a “priority” landing, they never comprehended the gravity of the situation.

Furthermore, the controllers said, they never felt compelled to pass along any warnings about low fuel as control of the plane passed from the New York Regional Control Center to the Kennedy Airport Approach Control Center to the Kennedy tower. One said he “assumed” information had been passed on that, in fact, never was.

After receiving his initial clearance to land at Kennedy, pilot Caviedes decided to abort the attempt as the plane began slipping dangerously below the safe approach path in heavy, gusting winds.

As the big plane pulled up for another try, Klotz radioed that “We’re running out of fuel. . . .”

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“I took it as a passing comment,” James Lowry, a controller at the Kennedy tower, testified Wednesday, adding that because “running out of fuel” is not a recognized emergency phrase, he attached no special significance to it.

Michael Sammartino, a controller in the airport’s Approach Control Center, said Klotz’s voice was very matter-of-fact. Nonetheless, Sammartino said that when he radioed Flight 52 of his intention to re-sequence the landing attempt, he asked the crew: “Is that fine with you and your fuel?”

The NTSB said it was then, seconds before the crash, that Klotz answered nonchalantly: “I guess so, and thank you very much.” A month after the crash, the NTSB issued an emergency recommendation that the Federal Aviation Administration take strong steps to assure that all pilots use “standard phraseology” in radio communications.

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