The Mystery of Flight 427

by Bill Adair

  But Brett didn’t find it the least bit peaceful, for it was directly in the flight path to the Pittsburgh airport. As he gazed at a memorial to the victims of one of the worst plane crashes in the nation’s history, USAir planes roared overhead. He felt as though they were taunting him.

  Gradually, George David was getting his property back. It had been a year since he heard the Boeing 737 roar through the air and crash on the edge of his 62-acre farm, but he still found remnants of the crash. Despite the huge cleanup effort, no one from USAir, the NTSB, or Beaver County had bothered to remove the hundreds of yards of red police tape around his property that was stamped DANGER—HAZARDOUS MATERIALS. On misty days he could still smell the aroma of jet fuel. His farm had once been a great place to hunt deer, but most of them had been scared away by the men in plastic suits.

  In the year since the crash, David, a police officer and part-time hay farmer, had watched a parade of cars go down his dirt road, ignoring a dozen NO TRESPASSING signs. He didn’t mind it if the visitors were families of the victims or USAir flight attendants who wanted to see where their coworkers had died. He had even hung a wreath in a tree for one of them. But he hated the souvenir hunters and the gawkers. Once, a woman walked up to him shouting, “Hey! Hey!” as he was quietly tracking a deer, which scared away the animal. Another guy had the nerve to come up to David’s door and snap a picture of David and his fiancée watching TV. What could anyone possibly want with that picture? Another time, he got into an argument with a stranger who refused to leave. Finally, David slugged the guy and he ran away.

  David and the two other families that owned the crash site felt they had been considerate for a whole year, allowing hundreds of people to visit and leave crosses and wreaths on their property. But they were ready to reclaim their peace and quiet. They decided no more visitors would be allowed after the anniversary. “I’ve got to get my life back,” David said.

  Brett met David during a visit to the crash site a few hours before the candlelight memorial service. “I’m sorry about your loss,” David told him.

  Brett had never spoken with anyone who had seen or heard the crash, and he was curious about what David remembered. He wanted to know what the plane had sounded like, whether David had seen it, how soon he’d gotten to the wreckage.

  “It was roaring,” David said. “It sounded like a Mack truck coming down a hill.”

  The small clearing that had been littered with airplane wreckage and body parts a year earlier was coming back to life. Grass was sprouting. Leaves had grown back on many of the trees, although some remained scarred by the crash and the fire, stripped of any sign of life for fifteen or twenty feet up the trunk. More than a dozen wreaths and mementos had been placed around the site. A crucifix was tacked on a blackened tree trunk. A cross was planted in the hill like a tombstone for passenger Leonard Grasso. Joanne Shortley had left a love message for her husband, Stephen, that said, “JS + SS” with a big heart, like something she would have written on a locker in junior high. Brett walked around the crash site searching the ground for the diamond from Joan’s engagement ring. He knew it was silly to think that it might still be lying out in the open after a year, but stranger things had happened. This was the place where Joan’s rose had been blown off the wreath, after all. Brett looked up several times at the USAir planes that flew over the crash site, about one per minute. They were probably at the same altitude as Joan’s plane had been, filled with people who never considered that life might suddenly end.

  He and Dan returned to the hotel to get dressed and then went back to Green Garden Plaza to get a ride to the memorial service. They were in one of the first buses that crunched up the gravel road and stopped near the site. Brett got out and walked down toward the place he called ground zero, where the plane’s nose had hit the road. A few people crouched along the road arranging candles in the shape of hearts. Brett walked back up the hill as several hundred family members gathered around the Reverend Thaddeus Barnum, the leader of the service. Brett stood right behind a tree where a baseball cap had been posted in honor of one of the passengers. The hat was labeled SUPER GRANDPA.

  A 737 happened to fly overhead at 7 P.M., just as the service began. Brett looked up at it. “Let there be silence among us,” said the pastor as the plane’s roar faded in the distance. At 7:03, the precise moment of the crash, church bells rang throughout Pittsburgh in honor of the victims. Everyone at the service said the Lord’s Prayer and recited the Twenty-third Psalm. Then the pastor said, “I know many people could not come back to this site. I am very glad that you did, to come and know and feel and remember and touch and taste and to feel again, the memory of those you’ve lost.”

  That night, as he ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant near the hotel, Brett felt relief that he had gotten through the anniversary. He had experienced a lot of anxiety leading up the ceremony, and now he was glad to move on. But the next day the sadness returned. Life seemed a dull gray once again. At times he would forget about the crash, when he would be having fun with his brothers or his mom or his friends. But then he would suddenly think, How can I be sitting here having a good time when Joan is dead? A friend called them “grief bombs.” When one exploded inside him, he lost track of what he was saying. He became quiet and often excused himself to get some fresh air.

  Three days before the anniversary, USAir surprised Wall Street analysts by announcing that it would make a pre-tax profit for the year. That was a remarkable turnaround for a company that had seemed so close to filing for bankruptcy a year earlier. The company’s stock, which had sunk to 3% after the crash, had rebounded as high as 14 in June 1995.

  The rebound had less to do with what USAir did than what others had done. Continental Airlines, which had invaded USAir’s East Coast stronghold a year earlier with its low-cost “Cal-Lite” service, pulled out in the spring, which allowed USAir to raise ticket prices enough to be profitable again. Most important, the public forgot about the airline’s crashes and safety problems. They were old news by the summer of 1995. With no new crashes or incidents, people again were content to put their lives in the hands of USAir.

  18. THE HOLE IN THE FLIGHT ENVELOPE

  As John Cox walked up the stairs to the USAir plane at Boeing Field in Seattle, he saw the word “EXPERIMENTAL” in big letters over the door. The sign beneath it read, THIS AIRCRAFT DOES NOT COMPLY WITH FEDERAL SAFETY REGULATIONS FOR STANDARD AIRCRAFT. The USAir plane had been specially equipped for the tests. It had a flight data recorder that took thirty measurements, more than twice as many as the box on Flight 427. First-class seats had been removed and replaced with computers and video equipment. Seven tiny video cameras were installed in the cockpit, in the windows overlooking the wings, on the wingtips, and on the tail. The plane had been loaded with several tons of sand to simulate the weight of passengers and luggage.

  Haueter did not expect any breakthroughs from the flight tests. He was doing them just to appease the parties and put to rest Laynor’s questions about the wake. Yes, the wake had jostled the plane and may have initiated whatever went wrong on Ship 513. But it surely didn’t flip the plane out of the sky. He was confident the tests would show that.

  There would be two sets of tests, one in Seattle and one in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Seattle flights were called the simulator validation tests, which was an effort to keep M-Cab honest. Much of the investigation had been based on M-Cab’s computer estimates about how 737s behave. Some people—most notably the head of the FAA, David Hinson—wanted to be sure that M-Cab accurately portrayed real 737s. The tests would also give the investigators a chance to learn about the crossover point, the precarious moment in flight when the plane was at the mercy of the rudder. It was an aerodynamic quirk that Cox called “the hole in the flight envelope.”

  At higher speeds, a plane would be going fast enough that the ailerons on the wings could easily counteract a sudden movement by the rudder. The pilots simply turned the wheel. But if the rudder suddenly we
nt hardover at speeds slower than the crossover point, the plane would roll out of control unless the pilots knew exactly what to do. They had to gain airspeed quickly and turn the wheel fully the opposite way of the rudder. But pilots of 737s were largely unaware of the phenomenon.

  When the plane was certified in 1967, Boeing told the FAA that if a pilot lost control of the plane because of a failure in the rudder valve, the problem could be countered by using the ailerons. The company later discovered that there were speeds at which that wasn’t true, but the discovery was not regarded as critical. Boeing did not mention the crossover point in its flight manuals or alert airlines or pilots about it. The company did not believe the crossover point was a big deal.

  Members of the NTSB aircraft performance group had noticed the crossover point during tests in M-Cab, but they needed data from a real 737 to determine precisely where it was. That information could help to settle the debate between Boeing and ALPA about whether the pilots could have prevented the crash.

  The plane, which had a radio call sign of “Boeing 053” instead of a USAir flight number, took off into sunny skies the morning of September 20, 1995. It headed north over the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the spectacular coastline along the Canadian border. Cox, Boeing test pilot Mike Carriker, and USAir pilot Jim Gibbs each had a chance to feel the crossover point for himself.

  When Cox got his turn in the cockpit, he pulled the throttle back to slow the airspeed to 190 knots, with the flaps set at “1,” just as they had been for Flight 427. He steadily pushed his foot on the left rudder pedal and simultaneously turned the wheel to the right to keep the plane from rolling, a maneuver known as a steady-heading sideslip.

  He flew for miles at that fragile point, balancing the wheel and the rudder pedal. If he slowed to just under 190, he started to lose control. He had to push the stick forward to lower the nose and gain airspeed to recover.

  Something is wrong here, Cox thought. The crossover point was way too high. He had expected it to be down around 170 knots, but it was actually at 187. The other two pilots tried the same maneuver and had slightly different interpretations of the speed, but they agreed on an important fact: Flight 427 was right at the crossover point when it flipped out of the sky.

  Haueter, who had stayed in Washington, got an excited call about the discovery from Tom Jacky, the NTSB engineer who headed the performance group.

  “They ran out of roll authority,” said Jacky.

  “You’re kidding,” said Haueter.

  “If you slow the airplane up, you don’t have enough wheel to stop the roll.”

  “Holy shit!” Haueter said.

  With the Seattle tests complete, Cox and the other pilots flew the plane across the country to Atlantic City for the wake turbulence tests. The FAA had agreed to loan its 727, a plane used primarily for research, to play the part of the Delta plane that was four miles ahead of Flight 427. The FAA jet had been equipped with special smoke generators on its wings.

  Wakes were usually invisible, but the 727’s smoke generators made them show up as spinning white tubes. They twisted across the sky like an abstract painting. The dual wakes would keep spinning for minutes, and depending on the winds, they would turn, curl, and bounce off each other. Standing near the runway when the FAA plane flew past, Cox could hear the whooosh from the spinning tube of air as it lingered long after the plane was gone.

  The next day, Cox got to see the phenomenon from the air as his 737 flew in and out of the 727’s wakes. They were stronger and closer together than Cox and the other pilots had expected. They marveled at the way the lines twisted and soared in the sky. It was as if they could finally see the pothole that they had been running over all these years.

  “Oh, that was neat,” Cox said to Boeing pilot Mike Carriker in the cockpit after they watched the wakes twirl back and forth. “I liked that.”

  For a week they tried 160 different conditions behind the 727—flying across the wakes, going up and down through them, and holding the wings, tail, or engines in them. For several tests, they took their hands and feet off the controls and rode the wakes like a roller coaster.

  As Haueter had expected, there were no breakthroughs. The pilots could easily recover from a wake, no matter the angle at which they flew into it. When Phillips asked Cox whether he was startled by the wake, Cox said he was not. Reacting to the wake, he said, “is as natural as breathing.”

  But the engineers learned a lot about wakes. They learned how long they lasted and how they could roll a plane. Haueter and Cox said afterward that the tests were well worth the $1 million price because the data could be used by researchers for years.

  The biggest breakthrough of the Atlantic City tests involved the mysterious thumps that had been heard on Flight 427’s cockpit tape. Cash, the shy sound expert, had rigged the voice recorder in the 737 so it was identical to the one on Flight 427, and he had Carriker fly in and out of the wakes.

  Carriker and the other pilots heard whooshing sounds when they flew in the wakes, but the sounds were not consistent. When Carriker landed, he told Cash the sounds didn’t match the thumps from 427.

  Still, Cash believed he might find a match. Noises often sounded different on the tape because the cockpit microphone picked up sounds through the airframe. Cash took the recording back to his hotel room, put headphones on, and queued up the tape.

  Bingo! Exactly the way it sounded on Flight 427! The thump was caused by the Delta plane’s wake. He could finally rule out the theories about explosions and birds. He called Haueter the next morning. “We’ve got a really good match,” he said.

  The sparring between Boeing and ALPA had remained behind the scenes, confined to phone calls and closed-door meetings. The angry exchange of letters about pilot error had not been released to the public. But as the two rivals prepared for the second hearing in Springfield, Virginia, in November 1995, it appeared that the conflict would go public.

  It was highly unusual for the NTSB to have a second hearing, but Chairman Jim Hall wanted it to release findings of the flight tests and give an update on the investigation. Hall wanted to reassure people that the crash had not been forgotten. He often said that the NTSB was working on three accidents: “Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh.” The safety board chose suburban Springfield for the hearing because it was the closest place to Washington that had an available ballroom.

  Boeing and ALPA came to Springfield with sharply different goals. The union wanted to keep the focus on the plane and emphasize the crossover point, but it was walking a thin line. Its leaders did not believe the 737 was unsafe—Cox and hundreds of other union members still flew it every day—but they wanted to emphasize the plane’s problems and show that the 737 needed safety fixes.

  The union leaders expected Boeing to come out with guns blazing, raising questions about whether Emmett and Germano had made mistakes in the cockpit. So ALPA prepared two strategies to respond through the news media. A normal, subdued approach would be used if the debate was civil. But if the hearing turned into nuclear war, the union would use tougher words. Cox was not on the initial list to testify, but two days before the hearing ALPA leaders decided that he should. They wanted to give the union’s account of the flight test to counter the presentations from several Boeing witnesses. The union was wary of John Purvis, Boeing’s chief accident investigator, who could cross-examine witnesses like a crafty trial lawyer. The ALPA leaders were afraid that Purvis might try to back Cox into a corner by asking hypothetical questions and challenging Cox for not being a test pilot.

  Boeing’s goal was just the opposite from ALPA’s: The company wanted to keep the focus on the possibility of pilot error. McGrew was convinced that Emmett and Germano had been startled by the wake turbulence, had made a crucial mistake by pulling back on the stick, and had failed to turn the wheel right and keep it there. Boeing witnesses would remind everyone that there still was no evidence that the plane had malfunctioned, emphasize that the wake turbulence was “an in
itiating event,” and raise the possibility that one or both pilots had stomped on the rudder pedal. The word “startled” would be used a lot.

  The hearing in the Hilton ballroom was again set up like a giant trial, with Boeing attorneys and engineers clustered around one table, the ALPA team at another. The other parties in the investigation—USAir, the machinists union, the FAA, the valve manufacturer Parker Hannifin, and the flight attendants union—also had tables. But this would primarily be a showdown between Boeing and ALPA.

  The hearing had a sideshow as well, a press conference by Philadelphia trial lawyer Arthur Wolk. A news release said that Wolk would “unveil the real causes of the Boeing 737 crashes that continue to baffle the NTSB.” The investigators regarded Wolk as a lawyer eager for a headline. Most of the press corps skipped his news conference and went to dinner. A few reporters showed up, along with Vikki Anderson, the FAA investigator. She sat in the back row, dutifully taking notes. (After the news conference, she said the head of the FAA had asked her to attend and write down Wolk’s theories. The FAA was open to suggestions from anyone, she said.)

  Wolk lashed out at the party system, saying, “Boeing has been involved in every single aspect of this. It makes no sense to have the company that has the most to lose involved in the investigation.” Using a model of a USAir plane, Wolk showed how the plane had rolled out of the sky. He said the PCU was faulty because the valve could reverse, but he could offer only the same theories the safety board had been chasing for months. The reporters asked a few questions, munched on free potato chips, and left.

  At the hearing the next day, as Cox walked up to testify, USAir lawyer Mark Dombroff whispered to a company official, “Cox is about to dump on Boeing.” But Cox was cautious. He explained his concerns about the crossover point and his surprise that it occurred at 190 knots/flaps 1, a routine speed and setting for an approach to an airport. “I would have expected more padding underneath,” he said. He delicately questioned the accuracy of Boeing’s simulator but said he was pleased that the company was going to correct it. He said he would not be disoriented by wake turbulence if he encountered it during a flight.