In Close Calls, Lives Ride on Reflex, Luck

The skies were clear and the ride was smooth as a jetliner climbed out of Dulles International Airport on a sunny August Sunday bound for Indianapolis.

So far, it was a day like any other in the skies of America. From Caribbean isles to the Southern California coast, passengers in U.S. air carriers were occupying cramped seats, eating from plastic trays and trusting their safety to the aviation professionals in cockpits and control towers across the nation.

But not all of the roughly 17,000 U.S. flights that day were routine, and at 12,500 feet above the Virginia countryside the flight to Indianapolis encountered the unexpected--a white, single-passenger glider approaching head-on.

The small, motorless plane was not on the radar screens of air traffic controllers. Nor had there been warnings during pre-flight briefings of glider activity in the area. But for the next few seconds that was irrelevant.

An instant after spotting the oncoming glider, the jetliner captain seized the controls from his co-pilot and thrust the yoke forward to halt the airliner’s climb. The big jet and its passengers ducked under the glider.

“I watched the glider pass (just overhead) . . . missing our tail section and wing at less than 100 feet,” noted the jetliner captain in his report on the incident.

Skill, alert action and luck saved these passengers and crew members. It is a combination that salvages many hazardous encounters, according to safety reports filed with the National Aeronautic and Space Administration by pilots and air traffic controllers.

This is the story of just one day, taken from a sample of the reports filed for Sunday, Aug. 31, 1986:

--In Denver, a jetliner racing for takeoff encountered potentially deadly wind shear just as its nose lifted off the runway. Wind shear, a severe weather condition that can cause a plane to abruptly lose altitude, is most treacherous during landing and takeoff. In this case the crew had recently practiced wind shear procedures in simulators. “Captain fire-walled the throttles for approximately 10 seconds,” nursing the jet to an altitude of 300 feet before it escaped the weather problem, the co-pilot wrote. He also praised the simulator program, but warned that state of the art wind shear detection instruments should be installed.

--In Pittsburgh, Pa., a commuter airline captain fatigued from a long day of short hops and working his ninth consecutive day in the cockpit, conceded that he “was distracted” keeping an eye out for other aircraft as his co-pilot botched the landing approach. Instead of turning to land on runway 10-Right, the co-pilot turned too wide and strayed into the path of another plane heading for the parallel runway 10-Left. The commuter was forced to abandon the approach and execute a big U-turn in the sky.

--Over Nebraska, the crew of an eastbound jetliner asked permission to descend when it ran into turbulent air at 37,000 feet. An air traffic controller approved but then was distracted by other traffic and realized almost too late that the descending plane would come dangerously close to crossing the path of a westbound airliner at 35,000 feet. The controller issued a series of urgent course changes in time to prevent the conflict.

--At Ontario, the crew of a passenger jet watched for two private planes that the tower said were in their vicinity as the jet took off over Pomona. Then, banking right to follow their departure course, the crew came face-to-face with a third plane that was not on the tower radar--a four-engine fire bomber coming at them head-on. The captain hurried his turn and abandoned the prescribed takeoff route to avoid a collision.

--Near Fullerton, a private plane en route to Northern California strayed into airspace reserved for Los Angeles International Airport jetliner traffic, prompting a radio rebuke by air traffic controllers and a subsequent Federal Aviation Administration investigation. Luckily, this plane didn’t get in the way of any jetliners.

But Aug. 31, 1986, was not a perfect Sunday for luck, skill and alert action.

In the clear sunny skies over Cerritos a small private plane wandered unintentionally and unnoticed into the path of an Aeromexico DC-9. This time there was no near miss, and the fiery result was one of the most deadly midair collisions in U.S. aviation history.