For Victims’ Families, Reforms Often Come Too Late : Safety: In a number of cases, the FAA has been found slow to implement changes until a crash occurs.

As Michele Mikuta watched it unfold on television, she knew instantly her husband was dead.

A news bulletin said a USAir jetliner had crashed in a swirling snowstorm at La Guardia Airport in New York.

In a jag of panic, her thoughts swirled too: Her husband, Thomas, would never see their toddler grow up, would never witness the birth of the second child she now carried. The children would never know their father. She had lost her companion.

When rescue workers finished counting the dead from USAir Flight 405 on March 22, 1992, there were 27 people, among them, Thomas Mikuta.

“Of course, you sit there with hope, but you know what you know,” Mikuta of Cos Cob, Conn., said. “I sat on the couch for hours just trapped in my body.”

Along with her daughters, “Tommy was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve never been so happy as I was with him,” she said. “He was just a great friend.”

In its report on the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board found the Federal Aviation Administration partially to blame for failing to act on safety recommendations made years prior.

USAir Flight 405 was the latest in a series of crashes involving aircraft that, records show, were particularly susceptible to control problems with ice on their wings. Two months after the crash, the FAA convened a worldwide conference on the issue of “de-icing.” The agency instituted many of the procedural changes that had been urged for years.

Knowing the crash happened because of a problem that might have been prevented “keeps the anger there,” Mikuta said. “You just hope and pray that they just get it right.”

Early next year, she plans to go to Hawaii, where she and Thomas honeymooned, to finish a book of memories of her husband that she will pass on to her daughters. She has also asked friends to write down their memories of Thomas.

Though still quite young, the children recognize the loss.

“As they get older,” Mikuta said, “they get more aware of differences. Why doesn’t she have a daddy? Why is Mommy sad? Why is Mommy crying?”

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Kenneth and Charolette Combs’ three children can’t hear enough stories about their parents these days.

“They love to talk about their mom and dad,” said the children’s uncle, Bob Combs, of Anchorage, Alaska. “They want to know more about them--what we did with them when we were younger.”

The Combses were among 18 people killed in the crash of a Northwest Airlink plane flying from Minneapolis to Hibbing, Minn., on Dec. 2, 1993.

The couple had flown from their home in Minnesota to attend their niece’s wedding when the commuter plane went down near the Hibbing airport.

Although the pilot was faulted, the NTSB concluded: “FAA oversight of the airline was inadequate.”

The NTSB noted this wasn’t the first time the FAA’s inspections program had been found to be a contributing factor in an accident. “The safety board has addressed the subject of inadequate FAA oversight and surveillance in numerous accident reports and safety recommendations over the past 10 years,” the board said.

The Combs children continue to live in their parents’ home and are looked after by various relatives.

“You don’t know how sad that was,” Bob Combs said. “I have his picture on the wall and I think about it every day. . . . It’s always there.”

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Doug Hainje was driving back to his home in Dell Rapids, S.D., with a friend when the radio crackled to life with the awful news.

There had been a small plane crash near Dubuque, Iowa. Among the eight dead were the governor of South Dakota, George S. Mickelson.

At first, Hainje, 39, didn’t give it much thought. But as he and his friend motored along, more details on the crash trickled out. Finally, the names of the dead were revealed.

When the name “Roger Hainje” was read, Doug’s friend clicked off the radio and the two sat in stunned silence.

It was Doug Hainje’s 43-year-old brother.

Within a matter of days, Hainje would find out that six weeks before the April 19, 1993, crash the NTSB had warned the FAA that the propellers used on Mitsubishi MU-2 aircraft could cause a “catastrophic accident.”

The NTSB’s warning was actually the third admonishment in seven months and followed a similar incident in New York two years before.

The FAA said the special inspections the NTSB was seeking were not warranted. But the agency changed its mind 10 days after the South Dakota accident.

“It’s getting a little easier,” Doug Hainje said. “But it’s still hard. It will always be a part of our lives.”

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With Daniel Jameson gone, “something is missing in the house,” his wife, Polly, said.

Daniel, who worked for the FAA, was traveling with two other agency employees when their plane slammed into a mountain near Winchester, Va., on Oct. 26, 1993. All three were killed.

When two close friends rapped on her door, she knew the news she and her 16-year-old son were about to receive wasn’t going to be good.

“When I saw them come to the door I knew something serious had happened,” Polly Jameson of Ocean City, N.J., said. “They wanted my son and me to hear it from someone close and not from an impersonal call or on television.

“It was hard to realize he wasn’t coming home. There were times when I still expected him to call and say to pick him up from the airport.”

Later, it was just as disturbing for her to hear what had caused the crash.

The NTSB concluded that the crash happened, in part, because the FAA had shoddy flight operations for its own fleet. Moreover, the safety board found, the FAA itself had discovered these shortcomings four years before, following a crash in 1988, but had not acted.

In the wake of the crash that killed Daniel Jameson, who was 50, the agency has promised to make improvements.

“I try thinking about the funny, silly stuff,” Polly Jameson said. “My husband loved to cook. On weekends he took over the kitchen. Which was fine, because I could burn water.”