Errors by Pilots, Controllers Cited in Crash Probe

A USAir DC-9 crashed in North Carolina last July because of a deadly combination of crew mistakes, bad weather and incomplete information from air traffic controllers, federal safety authorities concluded Tuesday. Thirty-seven people died in the crash.

After a nine-month investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which has been investigating why the plane crashed last July 2 as it attempted to land at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in a thunderstorm, officials said the pilots most likely experienced a false sense that they were rising and countered that effect by misdirecting the plane into the ground.

Federal officials said the crew and passengers probably felt an “elevator illusion” as the plane sped up for the aborted landing, prompting the pilot to push the nose of the plane down about 15 degrees to level the craft.

The illusion is a natural feeling of rocking backward and climbing as a plane accelerates. If the crew attempted to counter that feeling, it would have been a fatal mistake that plunged the plane into the ground, investigators said.

Investigators said USAir Flight 1016 approached the airport’s runway, but it encountered a severe windstorm and rain that forced the cockpit crew to abort the landing attempt.

As the crew increased the craft’s speed to pull away from the runway, the plane slammed into a 40 m.p.h. head wind, followed by a second burst of wind that pushed the plane downward, even though the crew experienced the sensation of rising. Finally, a tail wind spun the plane into the ground.

Of the 57 people on board the half-hour flight from Columbia, S.C., 20 survived the crash, including Capt. Michael Greenlee and his co-pilot, James Phillip Hayes, who was at the controls. Both men testified before the federal panel, with neither saying he remembered pushing the nose of the plane toward the ground.

However, the cockpit voice recorder captured Greenlee’s voice shouting “Down, push it down!” as the plane’s nose dipped and, seconds later, the plane slammed into trees and a private home.

Greenlee told investigators that the buffeting of the wind “was like having the rug pulled out from under you” before the plane dropped to the ground, broke into three pieces and burst into flames.

The federal safety board also suggested that the severe weather and incomplete information that the crew received from the air control tower may have contributed to the crash. Testimony during hearings into the crash included staff reports of a wind-shear warning and a lightning warning, which were not passed along to the plane’s crew.

Additionally, a ground instrument to measure runway visibility was not operating at the time of the crash, officials said.

The board also expressed concerns over whether USAir and the Federal Aviation Administration paid proper attention to ensuring that pilots have sufficient training for dealing with wind shear, though it said both pilots in this case were well trained.

The board criticized Greenlee and Hayes for trying to land when a storm was visible on their cockpit radar, even though the investigators acknowledged they might have thought it was farther away than it actually was.

“They made an error because the information they had was faulty,” said Barry Strauch, chief of the board’s human resources division. Although they made the wrong decision, he added, “I believe this crew put safety first.”