The Mystery of Flight 427

by Bill Adair

  The first 737 flew in early 1967 with Richolt’s valve in its tail.

  The FAA, an automatic party on every NTSB investigation, assigned more than a dozen employees to the Flight 427 probe. The team was led by Vikki Anderson, the former flight attendant, and included FAA test pilots, inspectors, engineers, and a doctor from the agency’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute. The team had representatives on each of the important NTSB groups. There was a lot at stake for the FAA because it had certified that the 737 was safe. If the plane got blamed for the crash, the FAA would also get blamed.

  The investigation revealed two faces of the FAA: the aggressive midlevel employees who handle the day-to-day scrutiny of Boeing, and the cautious top-level managers who occasionally sound like Boeing cheerleaders.

  Steve O’Neal was an FAA bureaucrat, but he looked more like a friendly bartender than a paper-pushing drone. He was a gentle man with thinning brown hair and a thick moustache, forty-two at the time of the crash, with two stepdaughters and two grandchildren. He was a dog lover (he had an old Samoyed named Casey who was losing her vision), and he was passionate about flying. He could never afford to do much piloting on his own, but his job as an FAA flight test engineer in Renton allowed him to take test flights several days each month. He usually rode in the cockpit to make sure the plane met each FAA requirement. He had flown thousands of times, but he still got a thrill when the pilots took the plane to the edge of its limits, stalling it at scary angles and then recovering.

  O’Neal spent his days studying failure modes, the myriad ways in which an engine or a flight control could malfunction. He had to be sure that those failures were benign or extremely improbable or that there was an adequate backup system to provide redundancy. He was especially proud that he had caught a complicated failure mode on three Airbus models involving a hydraulic failure. Airbus changed its pilot procedures because of his discovery.

  In the 427 investigation, O’Neal was assigned to the NTSB aircraft performance group, which analyzed the flight data recorder. He was an independent thinker and was not shy about making suggestions that might be unpopular with his bosses. In a meeting with FAA managers about a month after the crash, he suggested grounding the entire fleet of 737s. Two of the planes had crashed in similar circumstances, he said, and the safest approach was to keep them on the ground until the safety board figured out the cause.

  The idea went nowhere. Everyone else in the room felt there was insufficient evidence for such a dramatic step, which would have catastrophic consequences for virtually every airline in the country. Realizing that his idea had no support, O’Neal backed down. He was a conscientious employee, but he was also realistic. He knew he didn’t have proof that the 737 had a flaw. But he continued to have qualms about the plane and urged friends and relatives to fly other planes if possible. He worried that 737 pilots would not be able to recover if they had a rudder hardover.

  The other face of the FAA was Thomas McSweeny, a top official in charge of airplane certification. McSweeny was a twenty-two-year veteran of the agency, having previously worked eight years for an aerospace company. He was not formally a member of the Flight 427 investigation, but as the FAA’s chief regulator of airplanes, he was in charge of any NTSB safety fixes that grew out of the accident.

  The difference between McSweeny and O’Neal was politics. O’Neal worked in a job that allowed him to be an aggressive regulator without much concern for the political realities of the FAA or the costs to the manufacturers. If he thought the FAA should do something, he would propose it, even if it was unlikely to get past the scrutiny of the FAA’s economists and top officials. But McSweeny was a political animal who had to be realistic about what could be done.

  McSweeny often came across as a cautious bureaucrat rather than an aggressive regulator. When he talked about safety proposals, whether they were for the 737 or some other airplane, he was likely to sound like a spokesperson for the manufacturer. One reason for that was the FAA’s awkward position anytime someone questioned the safety of a plane. If the FAA failed to give a hearty endorsement that a plane was safe, the agency was essentially admitting it had done a lousy job. If the plane was unsafe, then the FAA must have screwed up by not spotting the problem first. McSweeny could have gotten around that easily enough if he’d just sounded as if he was tough on the companies he regulated, but in the view of NTSB officials, he often came across like a salesman for the companies. Even when the FAA mandated safety changes to the 737, he sounded like a booster of the plane.

  “They are really not design defects,” he said during a press conference to announce rule changes for the 737. “They are improvements to the design.” Boeing engineers used the same language to explain any fixes to the 737, calling them “improvements to an already safe design.”

  Relations between McSweeny and the NTSB were strained. That was no surprise, since the NTSB was the aviation watchdog. It needed to uncover problems at the FAA to justify its existence. Safety board officials liked to grouse about the bureaucratic sluggishness of the FAA and how protective the agency could be of the companies it was supposed to regulate. “McSweeny drives us nuts,” Haueter said. “It sounds like he’s speaking for Boeing.”

  Likewise, many people at the FAA complained about the safety board’s political grandstanding and its holier-than-thou approach. Relations were further strained because the safety board got mountains of favorable press coverage and the FAA often got pummeled.

  McSweeny seemed to have a strong dislike for the NTSB. He occasionally asked his staff to find out the agency’s next move so he could preempt the board with regulatory action. He told FAA staffers that one of his goals for the 737 Critical Design Review was to beat the NTSB to the punch. If everything worked out, McSweeny would get his report back long before the NTSB solved the case and the FAA would get the credit.

  The review began two months after the Hopewell crash and took about six months. The result was an inch-thick report that made twenty-seven recommendations about the plane. It called for better pilot training, fixes to the 737’s erratic yaw damper, and clarifications for vague language in the federal air regulations. But when FAA officials described the findings in an executive summary, they made it sound as though the report was a ringing endorsement of the plane. They stressed that their review found no serious problems with the 737. “No safety issue has been found that requires immediate corrective action,” the executive summary said. The twenty-seven recommendations will “enhance an already safe design.”

  As Brett walked into the thirteenth-floor conference room on September 23, 1996, to give a deposition, he thought about snubbing USAir lawyer Ann P. Goodman by refusing to shake her hand. After all, she represented the airline that had killed Joan, so it seemed perfectly reasonable that he didn’t have to be nice to her. Brett, wearing a tie that Joan had given him shortly before the crash, had come to the offices of McCullough, Campbell, and Lane in Chicago so the lawyers could determine how much Joan’s life was worth. USAir had the right to ask probing questions about their marriage, their income, even their sex life, to determine how big an award he was entitled to receive. Brett resented the whole process. “They killed my wife,” he said before the deposition, “and now they get to invade my privacy.”

  It had been nearly two years since the crash, and Brett was finally showing the first major signs of healing. He had stopped wearing his wedding band, sold his house in Lisle, and moved into a lakefront condo in Chicago. For the first year and a half after the crash, he had worn his wedding ring every day. But he was afraid people were beginning to think he was a weirdo who could not let go of the past. He tried putting it on the chain around his neck with Joan’s battered engagement ring, but they kept clanking together. So he put the wedding band away and watched the tan line on his finger gradually fade.

  He had done a few freelance jobs, writing ad copy to sell day planners, but it was not very inspiring work. He did not want to be hawking calendars the rest of his
life. So he immersed himself in a plan to build a chain of restaurants. He knew that people wanted more than food when they dined out; they wanted an experience. A new chain called the Rainforest Cafe had taken an environmental theme and dazzled customers with life-size mechanical animals and a realistic jungle. He thought, Why not do the same thing with dinosaurs?

  The appeal of dinosaurs was timeless. Every generation of kids seemed to be progressively more obsessed with them, yet no one had thought to franchise them. So Brett read everything he could about dinosaurs, the restaurant business, and the making of Jurassic Park. He called companies that made mechanical dinosaurs and asked them for pictures, videotapes, and prices. To avoid giving away his idea, he said he wanted to start “a small private collection of dinosaurs.”

  He knew it was a long shot, but it was the perfect time to try something new. He had no dependents, few obligations, and little to lose. He visited prehistoric exhibits and dinosaur companies in Utah, Arizona, Kentucky, and Michigan. Some of the mechanical beasts looked surprisingly realistic. Others looked old and ratty. Back home in Chicago, he scoured the Internet for information about theme parks and entertainment companies. He had no experience in the restaurant business, but he got help from his father, who was an executive in a company that ran school cafeterias.

  Brett came up with a name—T. Rex’s Dino World Cafe—and hired an artist to do a colorful logo of a tyrannosaurus with a mischievous grin. He also came up with a slogan (“The only restaurant where you’re not at the top of the food chain”) and designed a business plan and a presentation for investors. The centerpiece of each cafe would be a life-size T. Rex. Another area in the restaurant would have velociraptors, which were scary, long-legged dinosaurs that would periodically run out of the bushes and look as though they were about to attack customers at their tables. There also would be an area for families with small children that would have a tame brachiosaurus. The project consumed him. The more he worked, the less he thought of the crash.

  In response to Brett’s lawsuit, Boeing and USAir had blamed God. The airline said it had made all the necessary inspections of the plane and had followed federal rules. It said the crash “resulted from an Act of God, unavoidable accident, sudden emergency or conditions or occurrences for which USAir is not liable or responsible.”

  Boeing said essentially the same thing in its response. “Plaintiff’s damages, if any, were directly and proximately caused by an act of God for which Boeing is not liable.” It was boilerplate language used as a standard defense in many lawsuits, but when Brett heard about it, he was furious. How could they blame God for the crash? That made it sound like God willed the crash to happen. The companies seemed to be ducking any responsibility.

  Now he was in a law office taking an oath to tell the truth about Joan. He decided to be respectful, so he shook Goodman’s hand and sat down in a chair that looked out over the Chicago River. The court reporter sat to his left, while Goodman took a seat directly across from him. Mike Demetrio, Brett’s lawyer, sat at the far end of the table and appeared to be immersed in a magazine. But he was actually listening carefully to every word, ready to object at any moment.

  “Please state your full name for the record,” Goodman said.

  “Brett Alan Van Bortel.”

  “Let the record reflect this is the discovery deposition of Brett Alan Van Bortel being taken pursuant to the notice for today’s date,” she said. “Mr. Van Bortel, my name is Ann Goodman. I’m one of the attorneys representing USAir in this matter.”

  Goodman was a petite, humorless woman with blond hair who was the Chicago-based lawyer for USAir. Dombroff, the airline’s lead attorney, worked in Washington, so he had retained Goodman’s firm to handle much of the work on the Cook County lawsuits. Reading from Dombroff’s lengthy script of questions, Goodman robotically asked about Brett’s homes and mortgages. Then she abruptly switched gears and asked about drugs. Each question elicited just a fragment of information, so it took ten or twenty questions to get to anything of substance.

  “Are you currently taking any medication?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Have you taken any medication today?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “Have you taken any medication in the last twenty-four hours?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “What medication are you currently taking?”

  “On an irregular basis when I travel, Xanax. It’s an anti-anxiety drug for air travel, I guess.”

  “And you only take it for air travel?”

  “Before and during flights. That’s about it.”

  Goodman asked lots of questions about Brett’s employment, from the days when he operated a ski lift in Vail through his writing job for the company that published the Official Airline Guide. Then she began asking about Joan.

  “Did you marry a woman by the name of Joan Lahart, correct?”

  “Joan Elizabeth Lahart.”

  “How did you happen to meet?”

  “A friend of a friend, very casual, distant type of acquaintance. I had only met Joan briefly and it wasn’t until later on that we started dating.”

  “What was it that attracted you to Joan?”

  “I don’t know that I could put that in a nutshell,” Brett said. “It would be a combination of many things, but I thought she was a very beautiful woman and a very strong-willed and motivated woman.”

  Goodman seemed to jump randomly from topic to topic. She asked about Brett’s and Joan’s hobbies and interests, whether they went to college or professional football games, then about the names and ages of each of Joan’s brothers, then how much they had paid for the house on Riedy Road, and then about the night of the crash.

  “Was Joan required to make a business trip for Akzo Nobel on September 8, 1994?”

  “I guess I would quibble with required,” Brett said. “I don’t know if they made her, but she went on her trip for Akzo, yes.”

  Goodman asked Brett to describe the last time he had seen Joan and how he found out about the crash. Demetrio had heard the same painful questions at several depositions with his clients, and he was mystified as to why the USAir lawyers persisted in asking them.

  “Did you see her on September 8 before she took off for the airport?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you see her on September 8th?”

  “It was our ritual for me to drop her off at the train station in Lisle for her 6:20 train, which I did that morning.”

  “What did you say to her, and she say to you.”

  “I think I just said, ‘Love you and good-bye.’”

  “Did you talk to her during the course of the day?”

  He nodded.

  “Did she say anything to you at the train station?”

  “She just, I think, repeated that back to me. We knew we’d speak on the phone later that day.”

  Goodman asked about every tragic detail—what they said when they spoke that afternoon, how he heard about the crash, when he called USAir, when he got confirmation that she had been on the plane, and when he received Joan’s remains. Then she asked about Brett’s visits to see a psychologist.

  “Did Dr. Pimental help you?”

  “In some ways, but ultimately, no.”

  “How was she able to help you?”

  “I would say helping me understand myself better and my reaction to it, but I ultimately came to the conclusion that no one but God was ever going to change what happened, and talking about it would not help me.”

  Back to mortgage questions. Goodman wanted to know how much Brett had paid for his new condo on Lake Shore Drive, how big a mortgage he had, what his interest rate was. And then she abruptly shifted gears again.

  “How would you describe your marriage to her?”

  “Excellent. We got along like best friends. I was very fortunate. I don’t know why or how it happened, but I was one of the people that had one of the very good ones. I was very lucky.”

>   “Did you plan to have any children.”

  “Yes.”

  “Had you made any attempts to start a family?”

  “No.”

  “Were you waiting for a certain period of time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long had you planned on waiting?”

  “About another year.”

  “How would you describe your physical relationship with Joan?”

  “Very good. I don’t know, I guess I’m uncomfortable describing it. It was very good.”

  “You had normal sexual relations with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a regular basis?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the frequency?”

  Brett looked at Demetrio to see if he would object. When Demetrio did not, Brett looked back at Goodman, pitying her for having to ask such a question. She probably goes home and hates herself, Brett thought.

  Brett answered the question.

  Goodman asked who did the cleaning, took out the garbage, did the laundry, shoveled snow off the driveway, did the grocery shopping, the cooking, and the dishes. Who paid the bills? Did he have his bank statements from 1994? How much was the electric bill? The gas bill? How was Joan’s health? Did she smoke? How much did she drink? How much did she weigh? Was she ever convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor?

  Brett answered all her questions.

  “Are you currently engaged?”

  “No.”

  “Have you dated anyone recently?”

  Demetrio had known that one was coming. “I’m going to object to that question for the same reasoning that I objected to it at all the other depositions, and based upon that particular question, I’d instruct him not to answer,” he said.

  “I will state what my answer to your objection is,” Goodman replied, “that it goes to the discovery process.”