Questions Haunt Those Who Lost Loved Ones in Crashes : Aviation: For the relatives of victims, memories are clouded by possibility that deaths could have been prevented if proper safety equipment was in place.

Patricia Saveall can still hear the words from the airport official who called that day: “The plane has gone down.”

The young mother screamed so loudly she awakened her 8-year-old daughter. “I told her Daddy had been in an accident, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” she said.

Hours later, she learned how bad: No one had survived the crash.

Later still, she would find out that air safety investigators believed the accident may have been prevented if the commuter plane her husband, Alan Saveall, had been riding in had been equipped with a device that warns when a plane strays too close to terrain. Such devices weren’t required in small commuter planes until 1992--seven years after Alan Saveall’s death in Auburn, Me.

The crash devastated the Saveall family, and Patricia was forced to raise her two children, then 6 and 8, on her own.

“I think about it all the time, especially when I hear about other air crashes,” Saveall of Waterville, Me., said. “I think about how he died. What his last thoughts were. Why it had to happen.”

Saveall last spoke to her husband on the night of the crash when he called to say his flight had been delayed.

When the plane did not land as scheduled later that evening, she called the airport.

“He was such a big part of our lives. It takes a long time to grieve,” she said. “I had two children, and I decided they had to come first. I decided I had to be strong for them.

“I made a point of not forgetting him when we lost him,” she added. “He is in our conversations. I felt the children needed to hear his name. . . . We make references to him almost every day, when we see a grimace or a walk that remind us of him.

“He’ll never die.”

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It’s been five years since Aloha Islandair Flight 1712, a commuter plane, crashed into a mountainside on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, killing 20 people, including members of a high school volleyball team.

“The sores have healed but the inside is still bleeding,” said Rosemay Ku, whose nephew Testa Ku, 14, was killed in the crash.

“He loved his sports and outdoors,” Ku said. “He was the kind of guy who put his mind to it and was victorious.” His team had won the volleyball tournament and he was overjoyed about coming home. “He was so happy,” she said.

Barbara Helm’s 16-year-old daughter, Natale, also died in the crash.

“I spoke to her the night (before the crash),” Helm said. “My last words to her were that I’d see her tomorrow.”

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the Federal Aviation Administration contributed to the crash by not providing sufficient surveillance of Aloha Islandair’s operation. The NTSB also said that a low-altitude warning device “would have provided sufficient warning for the crew to have pulled up and overflown the terrain.”

“I was placing my trust in the federal government,” Helm said.

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Sixteen-year-old Sandra Schultz of West Chicago had always wanted to fly. And that morning in September, 1991, her father, Dennis, was as proud as could be to take her up in his Cessna.

They climbed into the tiny plane, got clearance for takeoff, but as the aircraft started to climb, the engine sputtered. Dennis Schultz lost control and the plane crashed in an industrial park, killing father and daughter.

The NTSB determined that the plane crashed because of a flaw in a carburetor part, known as a two-part venturi, that was first recognized in 1963.

“From my understanding,” said Sandra’s mother, Cathryn L. Brouwer of Elgin, Ill., “the part had been faulty for a long time. And I couldn’t understand, if it was faulty for that amount of time, why my daughter had to die. Something should have been done beforehand.

“Somebody needs to be held accountable. If it’s an accident, it’s one thing. But this wasn’t an accident.”

Some 18 months after the crash, the FAA issued a directive, requiring that the flaw be corrected.

Sandra Schultz had just started her junior year of high school. She wanted to be a commercial pilot, and had recently talked to Navy recruiters.

“I spent a fortune buying flying magazines so she could cut pictures out,” Brouwer said.

“This can’t happen. That is their job. They’re supposed to be for the safety of the people,” Brouwer said. “What I want to know is, who does their deciding on when they act and when they don’t? Does it sit in somebody’s box for a couple of years and nobody does anything with it?

“It’s so unnecessary. She was healthy, popular, energetic, a dancer, so full of life, and to have to die from someone else’s mistakes . . .” Brouwer’s voice trailed off.