Flight Crew Recounts Desperate Evacuation : L.A. crash: Testimony at safety board hearing brings into question aviation standards and airline procedures.

Two flight attendants told Thursday of their frantic efforts to evacuate a burning USAir jetliner after it collided with another plane on a Los Angeles runway, and one said the airline’s evacuation procedures may have led to a third attendant’s death.

Attendant William Ibarra told federal investigators that Deanne Bethea apparently succumbed as she attempted to follow a USAir rule that requires attendants to go to pre-assigned exits in emergencies. He said the 22-year-old woman groped her way through choking smoke toward an exit halfway back through the burning fuselage, bypassing a closer doorway directly across the aisle.

“It cost her her life,” Ibarra said at the final day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings on the disastrous Feb. 1 crash.

Patricia Hodges testified Thursday that she decided to deviate from another of USAir’s emergency procedures. She said she opened an emergency exit after the jetliner struck a commuter plane but before it skidded to a stop.

“I’m not going to sit there and wait,” she said. “If I can get one person off that plane and save a life, I’m going to do it . . . I thought that plane was going to blow up.”

The testimony of Hodges and the questions from NTSB investigators called into question whether federal standards for exit aisles and exiting procedures are adequate. Hodges recommended the removal of seats near emergency exits over the wings.

Hodges also said she wished her airline would abandon a requirement that women flight attendants wear two-inch heels instead of flats.

“I ended up with one shoe on and one shoe off,” she said. “I’d like to wear flats.”

Thursday’s testimony highlighted federal investigators’ concerns that 21 of the 22 who died aboard the USAir jet apparently survived the impact of the two planes but succumbed to smoke and flames. The captain died from impact injuries. All 12 occupants of a SkyWest commuter plane apparently died instantly.

Although the NTSB is not expected to issue its opinion on the causes of the crash for several months, air traffic controller Robin Wascher, who works for the Federal Aviation Administration, testified that her confusion prompted the crash.

She told NTSB investigators that she cleared the jetliner to land on the same runway on which she had positioned the commuter plane for takeoff.

As the NTSB hearings ended, the Department of Justice announced in Washington that under a negotiated settlement, the federal government, USAir and SkyWest have acknowledged their liability in the crash.

The agreement means that the attorneys representing the airlines and the federal government can open talks about monetary damages being sought by survivors and relatives of the victims.

Federal officials close to the case said the admission of liability greatly reduces the likelihood of protracted court cases.

Other than acknowledging the agreement, Justice Department officials declined further comment.

Both of the attendants testifying Thursday said the landing appeared normal as the Boeing 737 touched down Feb. 1 at LAX.

“Then there was the loudest sound I’d ever heard,” said Hodges, who was seated near the back of the passenger cabin.

“The cabin felt really warm and I remember smoke coming from underneath the floor,” said Ibarra, who was seated near the front. “I remember seeing smoke and fire from the top of the galley closet. . . . The smoke kept getting denser and it was hard to breathe.”

The jetliner, carrying 89 passengers and crew, careened to the left after striking and rolling over the commuter plane. Hodges said that before the big jet came to rest against a building, she opened the exit door beside her and looked out.

She said the door’s inflatable emergency slide fell to the ground, “but it did not inflate . . . and there was fire shooting over it. There was no way anyone could have evacuated through that exit.”

Ibarra said that once the plane came to a stop, he grabbed the handle of the door beside him and tried to shove the door open.

“It was extremely difficult to get it open,” he said. “I struggled with it--pushed it and pushed it--(but) I only got it about 10 inches open. I didn’t have any (strength) left and I couldn’t breathe any more. . . .

“I stuck my head out the door to breathe,” he said. “Finally, I got it open somehow, all the way open.”

Ibarra said he reached down for the handle to deploy the emergency chute, but the slide was gone, torn away in the crash.

By then, Hodges said, the flight attendants were yelling at the passengers, telling them to unbuckle their seat belts, get up, and hurry to the exits through smoke that had cut visibility almost to zero.

“We were shouting our commands, screaming our commands,” she said. “I was very upset . . . but the passengers were calm, very calm. I thought, ‘Don’t you realize what’s happening?’ ”

Ibarra said that when the first passenger reached the right front exit door, where he was standing, he grabbed the man’s arm and helped him jump to the ground.

“There wasn’t a chute, but the heat and the flames in the aircraft were much more dangerous than jumping out of the aircraft,” Ibarra said. “A second passenger jumped without any help.”

Meanwhile, with her rear exit door blocked by flames, Hodges followed USAir procedure and made her way forward to an emergency hatch above the right wing, the same hatch that Bethea failed to reach from the front of the plane.

“The cabin was full of smoke, completely dark,” Hodges said. “I was getting dizzy . . . I felt like I wanted to go to sleep.”

At that moment, she said, the plane’s fourth flight attendant, Van Spurgeon, grabbed her arm and led her to safety through the hatch.

Ibarra said that when no other passengers reached his door on their own, he tried to walk back through the cabin to find survivors.

“I took about three steps, but the heat and flames were very intense, and I felt my life was in danger,” said Ibarra, who reported severe respiratory problems, including pneumonia, from the smoke he inhaled in the accident.

“I jumped out of the aircraft,” he said. “My doctor told me later that if I had stayed three seconds longer, I never would have made it.”

Ibarra and Hodges said that once on the ground, they herded the 67 survivors away from the burning wreckage and did what they could to help those apparently suffering from shock.

“I was kind of relieved to see there were as many survivors as there were,” Ibarra said, “because the conditions in the cabin were for no one to be alive.”

No passengers testified during the hearings, but NTSB investigative reports based on interviews with survivors portrayed considerable confusion at one over-the-wing exit where 37 passengers exited.

A frightened woman seated near the exit “froze,” unable to get out of her seat, one report says. A male passenger climbed over seat backs to open the exit and pushed the woman out. In addition, an altercation lasting several seconds broke out between two passengers heading for the exit, the report says.

Investigators found a seat back crushed forward, partially blocking the exit.

FAA fire expert Richard Hill said Thursday that smoke engulfed the USAir jet’s cabin so rapidly because the flames were fed by fuel spewing from the SkyWest commuter plane and because a pressurized oxygen system apparently ruptured, accelerating the blaze.

An oxygen tank located in the forward section of the plane was damaged, probably when the plane slammed into an airport building, and appeared to have quickly intensified the heat and smoke pouring into the front of the plane, Hill said. The USAir passengers and crew probably had less than two minutes after the crash to get out, he said--far short of the five minutes the FAA is attempting to achieve as a survivability standard in most crash landings.

Federal aviation officials said they are moving to require airlines to alter seat configurations near the wing exits to help improve evacuation times.

Attention also was placed Thursday on a controversial, slow-moving FAA program to retrofit airliners with a new generation of fire-retardant interior materials. The USAir jet did not have the latest interiors because the FAA requires them to be installed only when a jetliner undergoes a major overhaul.

Walt Coleman, vice president of an airline industry group, said that only 5% to 10% of the nation’s commercial air fleet has been outfitted with the new materials and it may take a decade before half the fleet is upgraded. He said it costs $600,000 to $4 million to retrofit the interior of a commercial airliner, depending on its size and other factors.

FAA officials said the new interiors could add valuable seconds for escape in crashes like the USAir disaster, but the costs associated with imposing a deadline on the airlines could ruin some companies.