Advertisement

Aviation Officials Vow Fast Action to Ensure Safety

Share
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Facing criticism for their handling of the Boeing 757 wake turbulence problem, federal aviation officials Thursday vowed to move more swiftly to alert those in the airline industry to potential safety hazards and announced new measures intended to prevent accidents.

The announcement marked the second time that the Federal Aviation Administration has taken safety-related steps following disclosures that agency officials had been warned about the potential danger of wake turbulence created by 757s years before two fatal accidents claimed 13 lives.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Technology, Environment and Aviation, FAA Administrator David R. Hinson pledged that within 60 days his agency would review the role of its Office of Aviation Safety and create an efficient method to identify and act upon safety issues.

Advertisement

“I have asked specifically that they define management responsibility and accountability more clearly, so that we may be confident that safety issues are raised and receive appropriate priorities,” Hinson said.

Hinson said the agency has hired an official of Rand Corp., a well-known think tank, whose top priorities will include ensuring that safety concerns raised by scientists and researchers within the FAA get a proper hearing inside and outside the agency.

And starting this weekend--at a convention of general aviation pilots in Oshkosh, Wis.--the FAA’s Flight Standards and Aviation Safety office will disseminate information to pilots on the wake turbulence issue, Hinson said. He said the agency will quickly establish a process that makes certain that “emerging safety issues are addressed promptly and effectively.”

Hinson’s announcements came two days after an internal report concluded that the FAA may have mishandled the 757 wake turbulence issue because bureaucracy and poor communication sometimes compromised the agency’s ability to pinpoint and respond to potential safety problems in a timely fashion.

Both the internal report and Thursday’s hearing were prompted by a June 5 story in The Times, revealing that internal documents showed that the FAA had been warned about the 757 wake turbulence hazard by its own chief scientist, Robert E. Machol, starting in 1989. Eleven days before the first of two fatal accidents related to 757 turbulence, Machol had predicted to FAA managers that a “major crash” would occur if the agency failed to take actions to protect planes, especially smaller ones, landing behind 757s.

Subcommittee members Thursday repeatedly expressed concerns that the FAA could--and should--have acted sooner on the 757 turbulence issue.

Advertisement

At a minimum, most appeared to believe that the agency should have publicly drawn attention to the problem sometime between the first fatal accident in Billings, Mont., in December, 1992, and the second, in Santa Ana, in December, 1993. The Billings crash took eight lives; the Santa Ana crash killed five people, including the top two officials of the In-N-Out Burgers chain.

Both accidents happened after private aircraft encountered wake turbulence from 757s landing in front of them--the very scenario Machol had laid out in 1989.

In his testimony at Thursday’s hearing, Machol, who retired from the FAA April 30, said there was “nothing brilliant about any of these predictions. There (were) very good, solid reasons” for them, he said.

But the blunt-spoken, former college professor portrayed the FAA as being the victim of a “bureaucratic stasis that sometimes gets in the way of anything useful” being achieved.

“We have a situation where someone who seems to know what he’s talking about made a prediction that a cataclysmic accident could happen,” said subcommittee member Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, (R-Huntington Beach). While the FAA often does its job well, Rohrabacher said, “the way they did it in this particular case . . . perhaps cost the lives of some innocent people.”

Subcommittee members seized on the point that while the FAA has said nothing it could have done would have prevented the two fatal accidents, the fact that the agency in May announced new policies on controllers’ handling of 757s, as well as Hinson’s announcements during the hearing, suggests otherwise.

Advertisement

“Some things should have been done that probably could have (prevented) these accidents--at least one of them,” said Rep. Thomas Lewis (R-Florida), a pilot and veteran congressman who requested the hearing.

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Timothy Valentine (D-North Carolina), said, “I believe the majority of the criticisms leveled at the FAA in this case are on target.”

Asked at one point by Rohrabacher if some of the recently instituted operational procedures regarding 757s may have “averted these two tragedies,” Hinson paused and said, “Yes, perhaps.”

In what congressional sources described as an unusual measure, Valentine agreed that the subcommittee would soon meet in an executive session and draft a letter to Hinson. The action is intended to put more pressure on Hinson to follow through with the numerous safety-related measures he has promised to take.

“We want to follow up and make sure they get their act together,” one congressional source said.

During the five-hour hearing, subcommittee members also expressed concerns about why aviation officials in Canada and the United Kingdom took action on the 757 turbulence issue before the FAA did; whether the FAA can balance its two missions of ensuring safety and promoting the airline industry; and when the agency will hire a new chief scientist to replace Machol.

Advertisement

Besides Machol and Hinson, the subcommittee heard testimony from officials representing the National Transportation Safety Board, the Boeing Co., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s aviation safety reporting system, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Business Aircraft Assn.

Thursday’s actions by the FAA come two months after the agency in May adopted a policy requiring smaller planes in most instances to stay four miles behind 757s during landings to avoid their potentially deadly wake turbulence.

While there is not a consensus on the level of danger, the 757’s “clean” wing and body design appear to make it capable of producing higher-intensity levels of wake turbulence, funnels of air emanating from each wingtip containing hurricane-force winds.

Responding to recommendations made by the NTSB last February, the FAA also announced in May that air traffic controllers would be required to exercise caution when dealing with aircraft landing and taking off behind 757s, and to encourage 757 pilots to use established approach paths so that other pilots would not unwittingly fly into their wakes.

For years, the FAA has resisted increasing the separation distance for planes landing behind 757s because it could cut the number of flights at the nation’s busiest airports. That could result in delays and revenue losses for the aviation industry.

Hinson told subcommittee members that the agency does not factor in how the industry will be affected by the FAA’s decision-making process. But internal documents obtained this week through the Freedom of Information Act showed that FAA officials, while deliberating on what to do about the 757 wake turbulence problem, raised the issue of how Boeing might be affected by any decision they might make.

Advertisement
Advertisement