FAA Official Tells of Lapses by USAir’s Pilots : Aviation: Errors in cockpit procedure were observed before airline’s two latest crashes. Inspector says company quickly made changes.

Inspections conducted last May--before USAir’s two most recent crashes--revealed that the airline’s pilots were not always following prescribed cockpit procedures, a Federal Aviation Administration official testified here Wednesday.

David Bowden, the FAA’s principal investigator of USAir’s flight operations, said the federal agency’s inspectors rode in the cockpit jump seats of USAir jetliners on a total of 1,640 trips during May, and the inspectors noted that on a number of occasions, the pilots failed to brief one another properly on landing plans and failed to follow other mandated procedures.

He said that since May’s inspections, both training and cockpit procedures have improved, and USAir has been “extremely responsive” to all FAA suggestions for corrective action.

Bowden did not provide details on the pilots’ lapses and he said he could not recall, even in general terms, how many errors there were.

“But any time any pilot does not comply with any procedure, I’m deeply concerned,” Bowden said.

Bowden’s testimony came during the third day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings being held as part of the investigation into what caused USAir’s Flight 1016 to crash here July 2, killing 37 of the 57 people on board.

The NTSB is also investigating the crash earlier this month of another USAir jetliner in Pittsburgh that killed all 132 on board. The causes of the Pittsburgh crash remain a mystery.

But in the case of the Charlotte crash, investigators say they are all but certain that violent, shifting winds triggered by a thunderstorm hurled Flight 1016 to the ground as it was preparing to land.

Questions have arisen whether the cockpit crew of Flight 1016 responded properly to the wind-shear conditions, and the NTSB is looking into USAir’s cockpit procedures and pilot training as a part of the investigation.

Bowden said that in at least one instance, a USAir pilot was given credit for wind-shear training he never received, and in other instances, wind-shear training was poorly documented.

In other testimony Wednesday, scientists described the wind-shear “microburst” that felled Flight 1016 as one of the most violent they had ever studied.

Wes Wilson, a wind-shear expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the microburst was centered on the DC-9’s flight path and reached its maximum intensity just as the plane passed through it.

Meteorologists testified that they had determined a few minutes before the accident that the thunderstorm was of “level three” intensity--that is, it contained heavy rain--but an air traffic controller testified that he saw no need to relay that storm-intensity information to the plane.

However, the controller did relay two wind-shear warnings to Flight 1016 about a minute and 20 seconds before the jetliner flew into the savage winds of the microburst, plunged to the ground and burst into flames.

* CUTTING BACK: USAir is slashing flights and jobs in West Coast market. D1