U.S. to Probe FAA’s Handling of Jet Turbulence
U. S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena on Friday ordered a review to determine whether the Federal Aviation Administration waited too long before instituting new safety rules designed to prevent accidents caused by wake turbulence from Boeing 757 jetliners.
The announcement came five days after The Times, citing FAA internal documents, revealed that before two accidents that claimed 13 lives, the agency’s top scientist warned that 757 wake turbulence would cause a major crash if the agency failed to require smaller aircraft to stay farther behind 757s than called for at the time. “Serious questions have been raised regarding the timeliness of the agency’s actions over the past several years,” Pena said in a statement. “This review will evaluate whether FAA has the proper procedures in place to ensure that we are apprised of safety concerns at the earliest possible time so appropriate action can be taken in a timely way.
“The traveling public entrusts its safety to this department,” Pena added. “Maintaining that trust and that responsibility is essential.”
FAA scientist Robert E. Machol expressed concerns about the 757 threat as far back as 1990. But it wasn’t until December--after the crash of a private jetliner in Santa Ana claimed the lives of five people--that FAA Administrator David R. Hinson issued a bulletin instructing air traffic controllers nationwide to routinely warn pilots of smaller aircraft of the threat posed by the air turbulence in the wake of 757s.
In response to recommendations made by the National Transportation Safety Board in February, Hinson announced an interim policy in May requiring controllers to increase the distance smaller planes should stay behind 757s during landings from three miles to four miles.
Although aviation experts disagree on the level of danger involved, the plane’s unique, fuel-efficient design creates invisible “horizontal tornadoes” emanating from each wingtip that are more powerful and last longer than those made by other aircraft its size.
The FAA has maintained that there was insufficient data to demand immediate intervention. But the agency issued its new policy with no new data other than the two fatal crashes and three serious incidents or close calls in the previous 18 months.
A statement issued Friday by the FAA’s Hinson said: “I share the secretary’s concerns about the timeliness of the actions over the past several years regarding this issue and the adequacy of the process used by the agency in considering those actions.
“The public,” Hinson said, “is entitled to be assured that the FAA has acted, and can act in the future, with appropriate speed when the facts warrant.”
The review, to be completed by July 22, will also examine whether the FAA followed procedures outlined in the federal Freedom of Information Act in providing full information on the 757 issue.
Although The Times sought records on 757 wake turbulence under that act in January, it was not until May--after the newspaper appealed one agency rejection--that the FAA surrendered 226 pages in internal letters and memoranda, which showed that the agency was made aware of the 757 problem years ago from within its own ranks.
Besides the documents provided by the FAA, The Times obtained from independent sources an Oct. 3, 1989, memo suggesting the agency was sensitive to public perception on the issue of wake turbulence.
The memo, written by Machol and addressed to two members of the FAA management staff, at one point said Machol didn’t understand why there weren’t more wake turbulence disasters in light of the FAA’s wake turbulence policies. At the top of the memo, someone wrote: “Bob: A note of caution--please watch your wording--I don’t want ‘smoking guns’ in our files.”
Hinson has directed an agencywide review of responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Agency officials said The Times’ request appears to have been mishandled, though not deliberately, by lower-level employees.
The officials said the wake turbulence review would be conducted by a panel made up of a small number of people from the FAA and the Department of Transportation.
An agency official said it would focus on: “When did the FAA know what it knew and how soon thereafter was it in a position to make a decision and were those decisions made in a timely fashion?”
Although it is not uncommon for the FAA to conduct its own reviews, agency officials said, it was unusual for Transportation Department officials to take part in such a review. In part, the department is involved to lend credibility to the review--”so it doesn’t look like the FAA looked at itself and said everything is all right,” one official said.
Leo Garodz, a former FAA manager who expressed concerns about 757 wake turbulence to the FAA in 1991 as a consultant, welcomed the review.
“As I’ve said before, it sometimes takes a catastrophic event to get programs back on the burner,” he said. “That’s what happened here.
“It’s frustrating,” added Garodz, who was retained by the FAA to test the level of 757 wake turbulence in 1990. “They hired me to do the wake vortex research. . . . We did it, we made recommendations and nothing was done about it until now.”
The 757, a twin-engine narrow-body jet praised by pilots for its handling and safety, has been flown for more than a decade. It is unclear to those in the aviation industry why accidents and incidents involving 757 turbulence are a relatively recent phenomenon. Some have suggested it is because there are many more 757s flying and because commercial pilots are increasingly being pressured to cut delays, which can often mean following closer behind aircraft than is advised.
The hazard is greatest during landing and takeoff, when a smaller plane can inadvertently fall below the 757’s path and find itself entangled in hurricane-force winds.
Turbulence from 757s is suspected to have played a part in two crashes of small aircraft that were landing behind the sleek-bodied jets. Eight people died in a Billings, Mont., crash on Dec. 18, 1992. Five people, including two executives from the In-N-Out Burger Chain, died in a Dec. 15, 1993, accident in Santa Ana. Eleven days before the Billings crash, Machol attended a special meeting with the FAA’s hierarchy and predicted a catastrophe resulting from 757 wake turbulence.
The FAA has resisted efforts to increase separation distances between large jets and tailing airplanes because it could potentially decrease the number of flights at the nation’s busiest airports. That could cut into revenue of the already financially hard-hit airline industry.
Hinson said in Friday’s statement that the recently adopted measures appropriately address safety issues involving the 757. However, the agency has embarked on a two-year study of 757 wake turbulence to determine whether the new four-mile separation distance is apt. The Air Line Pilots Assn., the largest organization of pilots in the world, advises pilots of smaller planes to stay five miles behind 757s; the British equivalent of the FAA, the Civil Aviation Authority, requires from four to six miles of separation behind 757s, depending on the size of the trailing plane.
