Crash Raises Questions on Jet Evacuation

After the impact, with their jetliner skidding across the runway in flames, the cockpit crew of USAir Flight 1493 fought to bring the hulking aircraft to a halt. Capt. Colin F. Shaw cut the engines. Co-pilot David Kelly attempted to hit the brakes.

The Boeing 737 had just slammed into a small SkyWest commuter plane, crushing it like an aluminum can. In an instant, the SkyWest passengers and crew were dead. But in a twist that may earn the Feb. 1 collision a place in aviation safety textbooks, everyone on board the USAir jet--with the exception of the pilot--was alive when the wreckage came to rest.

They had less than two minutes to escape the dark, smoke-filled plane. Virtually all of those who became victims died while trying to get out.

Although the official cause of the crash may not be determined for weeks, government investigators have already identified a number of significant safety problems--including impediments to evacuation--that arose in the frantic minutes after the collision at Los Angeles International Airport.

The crash has raised questions about the workload in the air traffic control tower, the absence of a functioning ground radar system, and the fact that the pilot and co-pilot of the USAir jet were not able to see the SkyWest commuter--even though its rotating red beacon and navigational lights were illuminated as required.

The most significant questions, federal investigators say, may emerge from their examination of the evacuation of the USAir jet: Should the plane have been fitted with the latest fire-retardant wall and ceiling coverings? Do government aircraft evacuation tests accurately predict how long it will take passengers to escape? Could inflatable emergency chutes be better designed? Are the aisles and space between rows too narrow? Should flight attendants be seated near wing exits during landings to assist in the event of an emergency?

“I suspect that 10 years from now, to the extent that this accident is significant in the history of aviation safety, it may be from the survival factors aspect,” said James Burnett, the National Transportation Safety Board official who is leading the investigation. “I can’t think of a recent accident where this many people have been up and out of their seats and didn’t make it out.”

In the 10 days since the accident, NTSB investigators have tried to reconstruct the crash in an effort to discover not only its causes and contributing factors, but also to make recommendations that could prevent accidents in the future. Their findings, coupled with interviews from passengers who survived the crash, reveal a complex set of conditions that conspired to cost 34 people their lives:

The first critical moment came at 37 seconds past 6:03 p.m.

Out amid the neat rows of blue, green and white iridescent lights that define the runways and taxiways of the airport, the SkyWest Metroliner radioed the control tower to say it was sitting at Taxiway 45--a short route leading to the runway--and ready for departure. It was bound for Palmdale, with 10 passengers and two crew members on board.

At that very minute, the USAir Boeing 737 was heading west, toward the airport, at an altitude of about 2,200 feet over an imaginary point known as “Romen,” over the intersection of the Harbor Freeway and 83rd Street, in direct alignment with Runway 24-Left.

Kelly, the first officer, was at the controls. He asked the tower for clearance to touch down. He did not get a response. Inside the glass-walled control tower controller, Robin Lee Wascher did not hear him, she later told investigators.

In her eight years with the Federal Aviation Administration, the 38-year-old controller had worked her way up the ranks from two airports in Mississippi to Aspen, Colo., and finally to Los Angeles. Her no-nonsense professionalism and years of experience had earned her the right to direct complex maneuvers at one of the nation’s busiest airports.

On the night of Feb. 1, the NTSB would later say, Wascher was distracted.

No Backup Help

As was the case on most nights, there was no backup controller to help Wascher do her job. In the wake of at least two near-misses on airport runways, federal officials had recommended that assistant controllers be used. But, the NTSB found, none of the controllers liked working that shift, so it generally went unfilled.

Moreover, two important radar systems--ground radar as well as the radar display screens on the controller’s console--were not functioning properly. Without the radar, Wascher was forced to rely on her memory and vision to guide departing and arriving aircraft. Yet, the NTSB would say that a light standard may have partially blocked her view of the intersection where the crash occurred. The controller would complain about glare.

Meanwhile, out on Runway 24-L, another commuter plane was getting ready to take off. It was a Wings West Metroliner, the same type as the SkyWest plane.

To make matters worse, a tower employee mistakenly put the Wings West paperwork in his own “in” basket, rather than in Wascher’s. So, Wascher later said, she had no idea that the Wings West plane was there.

The time was 6:04:44 p.m. Just 59 seconds had passed since USAir’s Kelly had asked for clearance to land.

Staring out the window, Wascher spotted the Wings West plane on a taxiway. But she made a devastating miscalculation: She mistook it for the SkyWest commuter sitting 2,000 feet to the west.

“Taxi into position and hold,” she instructed the SkyWest pilot. He moved his plane onto the runway, but the controller later said she never saw it.

The USAir jet, meanwhile, was swooping in for a landing at more than 130 m.p.h. At 6:05:29 p.m., the co-pilot once again asked for clearance to land. Once again, he got no answer.

The seconds were quickly ticking away. Wascher was confused. She asked at least one other pilot if his aircraft was on Runway 24-L. It was not.

6:05:52 p.m.: The USAir plane made its third request for clearance to land.

6:05:56 p.m.: Wascher gave the go-ahead: “USAir 1493 cleared to land, Runway 24-L.” The stage for disaster had been set.

Out on the runway, the SkyWest plane was illuminated only by its rotating beacon and its navigational lights. Had its other lights been on, the commuter plane would have been more conspicuous to the USAir cockpit crew. Nonetheless, SkyWest was in compliance with FAA rules.

The wing wheels of Flight 1493 touched down with precision. As the nose of the jet came down, Kelly spotted the commuter plane for the first time. By then, he was so close that he could see his own landing lights shining through the little plane’s propeller.

In the second-to-last row of Kelly’s plane, passenger Christina Voss had just awakened from a pleasant nap. The 29-year-old Air Force captain from Hermosa Beach felt the aircraft touch down with one jolt, then another. Almost instantly, she saw the fireball out the window to her left. She thought she was dreaming.

Dragging the SkyWest commuter under its belly, the USAir plane skidded across the runway for a few terrifying moments. Voss wondered if it would ever stop. She knew there was no way to get out while the plane was still moving. After what seemed like an eternity, the aircraft slammed into a small, cream-colored storage building almost a quarter of a mile away from the impact point.

With flames boiling around the plane and black smoke choking the cabin, Voss was thrown together with 81 other passengers and crew members in a desperate dash for survival. The lights were out, the pilot was dead and Kelly was trapped in the cockpit with two broken legs. A rescuer later yanked him through the window.

Under federal regulations, all the occupants of a plane are supposed to be able to evacuate in 90 seconds, even with half of the emergency exits blocked. In this crash, the evacuation would take less than two minutes, with four of the six exits available. But not everybody made it.

Real-life emergency conditions such as those in the Los Angeles crash are not simulated when commercial airlines perform their evacuation tests. The airlines use healthy employees as passengers, and according to the NTSB, the drills are not a surprise.

To a certain extent, the positions where passengers were seated on the USAir jet determined who lived and who died. Most victims had been sitting toward the front of the plane in rows 1 through 7. But three people, including a flight attendant, did jump to safety through the plane’s right front door. It was only a three-foot jump because the landing gear had collapsed.

In the back of the aircraft, another attendant hurriedly opened the left emergency exit, only to face a hot orange wall of flames. Quickly, she drew the door shut.

The right rear exit was clear, its silver inflatable chute providing a harrowing passage to the ground. The tail of the mangled plane was angled so far into the air that the slide was essentially a vertical drop. “It was more like a controlled fall than a slide,” passenger Dwayne Bennett would later recall.

Bennett, a 27-year-old Department of Defense employee, was seated in the 16th row of the USAir jet, halfway between the wing and the tail. He already had survived one crash, in an Army helicopter in 1982. As his window bubbled from the heat, he tore off a red and beige seat cushion to clear his path to the aisle. It was only 18 inches wide--room for single-file only.

On his way to the door, Bennett heard a woman’s voice. He could barely see her bright red jacket through the smoke. “Help me,” she cried. “I can’t get out.” Bennett leaned down to unbuckle her seat belt. “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing her arm.

One after the other, they slid down the chute. Bennett marveled at how smooth the evacuation was, with two flight attendants ushering passengers out the door. The NTSB would later find that at least 15 people escaped that way.

But there was chaos in the middle of the plane. Most of the passengers thought that the left wing exit was blocked by fire, although two escaped that way. At the right wing exit, there was a crush of people. Two men got into a fistfight over who would leave first, wasting precious seconds.

There were no flight attendants on hand to prevent the fight. They were at opposite ends of the plane, two in the front and two in the rear, stuck where they had been seated for landing. Two of them tried unsuccessfully to get to the wing to help passengers, but could not make it through the smoke and the crowded aisles. A third died while trying.

The passengers were on their own. “Open the door! Open the door!” people were screaming. The closest person to the right wing exit was a 36-year-old Los Angeles woman, the passenger in seat 10F. Under new federal rules, she was supposed to receive special instructions on how to pull the hatch off in the event of an emergency. Whether she got such information remains unclear.

Eventually, a man reached past the woman and unlatched the exit hatch, pulling it free. The passengers bolted out onto the wing of the burning plane and jumped to safety.

The path to the emergency exit was narrow. Although the precise spacing of the USAir seats is still under investigation, Burnett said that the exit rows on the USAir jet had only one more inch of legroom space than other rows in the coach section. Typically, U.S. planes may provide as little as seven inches from the back of one seat to the front of the other, according to the Assn. of Flight Attendants.

Burnett said that the NTSB will study whether more people could have escaped if there had been more room on the USAir plane.

Safety Measure

In a 1985 crash in Manchester, England, some of the 54 victims died while trying to escape fire and smoke, and many of the bodies were found piled near emergency exits. Following that crash, Burnett said, the British government required airlines to remove the seat next to the wing exit or provide at least 10 inches of space between seats on the exit row.

In the United States, the FAA also studied that accident, and determined that the evacuation rate would be 15% faster if a seat were removed or 20 inches of space were provided next to the wing exits. Burnett said a regulation to that effect has been proposed, but not adopted.

Such a rule might have made Paula Garavaglia’s escape easier. Blinded by the smoke, the 37-year-old Pasadena woman groped for the exit on the right side of the plane.

But she miscalculated. She was one row behind the door. She would have to climb over a seat to get out. Her left leg was out the exit door when her right leg got stuck, pinned between a seat back and the wall. She could feel people pushing past her. She screamed for help, but nobody stopped. Finally, gasping for breath, she pulled free.

Emergency vehicles converged on the flaming wreckage. Firefighters sprayed foam as the survivors--some dazed, others seriously injured--stumbled out onto the Tarmac. Inside the plane, walls and ceilings burned. Under federal rules, the cabin was not required to be retrofitted with the latest fire-retardant materials.

While the rescue effort continued, 18 people--a flight attendant and 17 passengers--died of smoke inhalation. Another passenger died still strapped in his seat.

Contributing to this article was Times staff writer Tracy Wood.