Airline Crash Is Tied to Faulty Weight Rules

Safety measures announced last May to prevent dangerous overloading of small commuter planes can leave room for critical errors and should be revamped, federal investigators warned Thursday.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued that recommendation as it concluded a yearlong investigation of the Jan. 8, 2003, crash of US Airways Express Flight 5481 in Charlotte, N.C. The plane went into an unusually steep climb after taking off from Charlotte and crashed on the airport grounds, killing all 21 people aboard.

The independent safety agency strongly criticized the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Midwest, which operated the plane for US Airways Express.

“We had folks all down the line who did not do their jobs,” said NTSB Chairman Ellen Engleman Conners. “The entire system was in a breakdown situation.”

The crash was caused by a combination of two factors that rendered the Beech 1990D twin-engine turboprop “virtually uncontrollable,” investigators concluded.

Unbeknown to the pilots, a botched maintenance procedure had sharply limited their ability to push the nose of the plane down in flight. In addition, the plane was tail-heavy -- too much weight had been loaded too close to the back, the NTSB found.

The ability to fully use the controls probably would have allowed the pilots to recover. And proper loading of the plane -- with more weight closer to the front -- would have eliminated the second hazard.

The ground crew had loaded the plane using standard estimates for the average weight of passengers and bags that later turned out to be outdated, investigators said. Not only was the plane overloaded, but so much weight was distributed toward the rear that it exceeded the plane’s design specifications.

On May 12, the FAA ordered airlines to take into account the growing heft of Americans. The agency increased the average weight estimate for passengers and their carry-on items by 10 pounds, to 190 pounds in the summer and 195 pounds in the winter. The allowance for checked bags was raised by five pounds, to 30 pounds for each piece.

Those revised guidelines could still lead to underestimating, investigators concluded. “Although the FAA actions have reduced errors, additional measures are required,” investigator Kevin Renze told the board during a public meeting.

For some small planes, using actual weights of passengers would be better, the NTSB said.

An FAA spokesman said the agency expected to issue new weight and loading requirements later this year that should address the NTSB recommendations. The agency has also ordered changes in maintenance procedures for planes similar to the one that crashed.

A spokeswoman for the parent company of Air Midwest, Mesa Air Group of Phoenix, was not available for comment.

A series of missteps led to the crash, the NTSB found.

The airline failed to properly oversee maintenance done by an outside contractor, the NTSB found. Mechanics skipped required steps during maintenance and failed to perform a complete check of their finished work. And the FAA did not adequately follow through on earlier concerns within the agency about the quality of the airline’s maintenance program.

“This accident has been extremely frustrating to many of us, because of the chain of human errors and sloppiness,” said NTSB board member Carol Carmody.

In the House, two leading Transportation Committee members Thursday asked the Transportation Department inspector general to investigate the airlines’ use of outside maintenance contractors.

“We continue to be concerned that the FAA is not well positioned to provide effective oversight of this segment of the maintenance workforce,” wrote Reps. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.).

The flight control system that underwent maintenance operated the plane’s elevators, which are movable flaps in the horizontal part of the tail that determine the up-and-down pitch of the nose. The elevators are operated by a pilot pulling back or pushing forward on the control column.

Investigators said the control system was slightly out of adjustment when the plane was serviced two days before the crash. But in trying to fix a problem, the mechanics inadvertently created another one.