If government
doesn't act, more will die as in
crash of Flight 3407
by Michael Daly
Sun., Feb. 15th, 2009
Beverly Eckert may have been killed by the same sort of governmental incompetence and indifference that she campaigned tirelessly against after her husband's death on 9/11.
Even as Eckert was pushing to address the lapses in intelligence, enforcement and safety that contributed to 9/11, federal safety officials were calling for improved safeguards against an aviation hazard that likely killed her and 49 others near Buffalo on Thursday night.
The National Transportation Safety Board's efforts regarding icing on turboprop planes date back to the 1994 crash of an American Eagle airliner in Roselawn, Ind., that killed 68.
The committee was still "examining" the question in 1997, when a thin layer of wing ice caused a Comair turboprop to crash outside Detroit, killing 19.
"Any time we see an accident like this repeating itself, on information we should have already learned, it's an indictment of the whole system," then-NTSB chairman James Hall said. "Icing needs to be aggressively approached."
The FAA's committee took another seven years to complete a final report.
Cost was a big question and the FAA commenced "a study to compile data for the economic analysis," to be followed by a "preliminary analysis" and a subsequent evaluation.
By 2007, the agency was finally inching toward some changes in aircraft design requirements, and guidelines for the use of de-icing equipment and permissible conditions to operate. It has yet to institute four specific icing recommendations in these areas even though they are among the NTSB's "Most Wanted Transportation Safety Improvements."
"Status - Open - Unacceptable response," reads the notation next to each of the four recommendations.
In October 2008, 14 years after the Roselawn crash, the NTSB noted the FAA "has not adopted a systematic and proactive approach to the certification and operational issues of turbine-engine-driven, transport-category airplane icing."
Walking the same halls of Congress that Eckert walked after 9/11, NTSB officials have warned the House Subcommittee on Aviation that something must be done "before another accident or serious incident occurs."
NTSB board member Steven Chealander told the Senate subcommittee on Aviation Operations last April that the FAA had finally made some improvements, but remained "unacceptably slow" in acting.
On Friday, Chealander was up in Buffalo, addressing the press about the crash of Continental Flight 3407. He cautioned it was too early to determine the cause, but icing was a prime suspect.
He cited an aviation truth that had been demonstrated with tragic result in the Detroit crash a dozen years before.
"A quarter-inch of ice will change the aerodynamics of a wing," Chealander said.
The cockpit recorder from Flight 3407 indicates the pilot had noted a buildup and activated the de-icing equipment.
Among the questions to be answered are whether the equipment was functioning, whether it was activated early enough and whether the NTSB's longstanding recommendations might have made a critical difference.
The air traffic recording indicates Flight 3407's pilot was unconcerned just moments before the plane suddenly lost contact 5 miles outside the airport. She says, "3407," her voice calm and bright, poignantly alive. The controller responds a moment later but gets no answer.
"3407 contact tower ... 3407 ... 3407," he says.
By then, Flight 3407 had crashed into a house.
The air traffic controller must have suspected the cause.
"You getting any kind of icing, anything there?" he asked the pilot of an approaching Delta plane immediately afterward.
"We've got about a half, a quarter inch," the Delta pilot said.
Beverly Eckert had been flying into Buffalo to award a scholarship in honor of her husband, Sean Rooney, in whose memory she had fought so long and hard for reform.
"Government must change so that those failures never happen again," she once said. "If we don't get answers to what went wrong, there will be a next time."
