Aviation

Citation

(2001), "Aviation", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 10 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2001.07310eac.006

Aviation

Aviation

24 March 2001 – Gustavia, St Barts

A small aircraft crashed on the Caribbean island of St Barts today, killing all 19 people on board and one person on the ground, authorities said. The Air Caraibes aircraft departed from the island of St Martin this afternoon and crashed into a house near the airport on St Barthelemy, said Herve Siffre, police spokesman. The aircraft crashed while preparing to land at the airport on the mountainous island, Siffre said. A man was killed when the Twin Otter propeller aircraft crashed into his house in a field nearby. His wife was in the hospital with serious injuries. Police on St Barts were interviewing witnesses and sifting through the wreckage, searching for clues as to what could have caused the crash, Siffre said. The 17 passengers were mostly French tourists, said Ariana Halley, a manager for the airline on Dutch St Maarten. The airline would not release the names of passengers until family members were notified. There were also two crew members on the aircraft, she said.

27 March 2001 – De Havilland DHC-6-300 (Twin Otter) F-OGES, operated by Air Caraibe, crashed on landing at St Barthelemy Airport at 16.05, EST, 24 March, following a flight from St Maarten. The aircraft was destroyed. All 19 persons on board were killed, along with one person on the ground. Another person on the ground was seriously injured.

29 March 2001 – Aspen, Colorado, USA

A private Gulfstream 111 crashed today near an airport in Aspen, killing at least 17 people, authorities said. A flight plan for the Gulfstream listed 18 people on board, and 17 bodies were recovered after the crash, said Joe DiSalvo, a spokesman for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office. Eyewitnesses saw the airplane go down northwest of the airport shortly after 19.00. Wreckage was strewn over about 100 yards. Allen Kenitzer of the Federal Aviation Authority said the plane was a Gulfstream III on a charter flight.

30 March 2001 – A chartered jet slammed into a hillside yesterday as it approached an airport in Aspen, killing all 18 people on board, authorities said. The aircraft fell apart as it dived across a culvert and struck another bluff just short of the runway. Wreckage and bodies were strewn across the crash site. Two dead passengers were still strapped to their seats, and one was sprawled on a hillside. The Gulfstream III twin-engine jet left from Burbank, California, and stopped in Los Angeles before departing for Aspen. A total of 15 passengers and three crew were on board, said Allen Kenitzer, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman in Seattle. There were no distress calls before the crash, said Marie Munday, a spokeswoman for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office. All 18 bodies were recovered, she said. The victims were not immediately identified. The National Weather Service reported light snow and mist in the Aspen area last night. An eyewitness saw the aircraft go down at the Sardy Field Airport shortly after 19.00, local time. Madeleine Osberger was driving near the airport when she saw the plane making its final approach. Debris at the scene showed the plane lost its tail when it hit a hillside about 20ft high. It fell apart as it plunged across a 200ft culvert between the hill and the airport, then slammed into another bluff about 500 yards short of the runway. Greg Reszel, travelling along the highway near the airport, said that the plane was travelling so slowly he thought it was a helicopter. He said it lurched and appeared to stall. Avjet Corporation in Burbank, California, manages the jet for Airborne Charter Inc., which owns it. Avjet president Marc Foulkrod told reporters that the aircraft left from the Burbank Airport, made a stop at Los Angeles International Airport and then headed to Aspen. Foulkrod declined to release names of anyone on the plane. He said of the flight crew: "They were Avjet employees, long-time employees. The senior captain had extensive experience." In Washington, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, Ted Lopatkiewicz, said that the agency would investigate.

31 March 2001 – Gulfstream G-1159A (Gulfstream III) N303GA crashed into a mountain approximately one mile from Aspen Airport, Colorado, at 02.01, 30 March, while on approach to Aspen following a flight from Los Angeles, California. Aircraft was destroyed. The 16 passengers and two crew were killed. Families of the 18 people killed in an aircraft crash near Aspen, Colorado, today visited the site where the charter jet went down. Police briefly closed Colorado 82 – the busy highway just feet from where the Gulfstream G-1159A (Gulfstream 111) (N303GA) slammed into a hillside at around 19.00 on Thursday (29 March), so relatives could view the area. Investigators said they still did not know why the aircraft went down during its final approach to Pitkin County Airport, killing all 15 passengers and three crew. The flight originated in Burbank, California, and stopped at Los Angeles. Carol Carmody, the National Transportation Safety Board's acting chairwoman, said the aircraft's port wing hit the ground first, moments after radio transmissions indicated that the runway lights were on and the pilot saw the landing strip. No distress calls were reported. "Fifty-five seconds after the hour, the pilot said 'Yes, I have the runway in sight', and that was the last transmission from the pilot", Carmody said. The NTSB said it was investigating several possible reasons for the crash, one of which was the weather. The National Weather Service reported light snow at the time of the crash; visibility dropped from ten miles to less than two miles in about 20 minutes just before the aircraft went down. Efforts to determine the cause were hampered because there was no flight data recorder on board the aircraft. Avjet Corp., which managed and maintained the aircraft, said the captain, Bob Frisbie, regularly flew to Aspen and had 10,000 hours of flight time.

1 April 2001 – The lead investigator said yesterday the charter jet that crashed near Aspen, killing everyone on board should not have tried to land because weather conditions were too bad. "Absolutely not", said Al Dickinson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board team examining the crash, when asked if a landing should have been attempted. The National Weather Service reported light snow at the time of the crash; visibility dropped from ten miles to less than two miles in about 20 minutes just before the aircraft went down. The Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is tricky to land in even on clear days. Its single runway is surrounded by mountains that force approaching aircraft to make steep descents. It was that complexity that had led the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a notice just two days before the crash saying that aircraft should not be allowed to make an instrument landing at the airport at night, said Carol Carmody, the National Transportation Safety Board's acting chairwoman. The Gulfstream G-1159A (Gulfstream 111) (N303GA), with 15 passengers and three crew members, was flying with instruments on Thursday night (29 March) when it crashed near the runway. Carmody said pilots had been notified against night instrument landings, but that controllers at Aspen-Pitkin County Airport had not been and were not warning pilots. Carmody said she did not know why the notice had not reached the Aspen tower personnel. Carmody said that the crew of the aircraft had received the notice to pilots, or NOTAM, in California, and that the conditions apparently meant the pilot should not have been cleared for an instrument approach. "I find it troubling, no question", Carmody said. "I find it interesting that the flight service station in California had the NOTAM and the airport affected did not." After the accident, the FAA issued a new notice stating an instrument landing would not be allowed at night at Aspen. Carmody said there may have been some confusion about the earlier notice because it was not worded clearly. Investigators said they still did not know why the aircraft went down during its final approach to the airport.

4 April 2001 – Adaril, Sudan

Sudan's deputy defence minister and 13 other high-ranking military officers were killed as their plane crashed on take-off in southern Sudan today, state television reported. A low-ranking soldier was also killed. The television said the deputy minister, Col. Ibrahim Shamsul-Oin, and the others had been touring a southern military area and were headed back to Khartoum when their plane skidded off the runway. The report portrayed it as an accident, though it gave no details on the cause. The crash took place in Adaril, an oil-rich area 470 miles south of Khartoum that has been the scene of attacks on aircraft by southern rebels in the past. Shamsul-Oin had backed the coup in which Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir's took power in 1989. The dead included a general, seven lieutenant generals, three brigadiers, a lieutenant colonel and a colonel. Also killed was a corporal. The blow to Sudan's military hierarchy came amid sharpening tensions between the government and opposition leader Hassan Turabi, a rightist Islamic ideologue who was el-Bashir's top ally until a falling out in 1999.

7 April 2001 – Bo Tranh district, Vietnam

A helicopter crashed today in central Vietnam, killing all 20 people on board. Searchers found the crashed helicopter in Bo Tranh district in Quang Bing province after it lost contact with air controllers, officials said. Police said they had no other information about the accident.

8 April 2001 – Bad weather or a mechanical fault may have caused a helicopter crash that killed 16 people, including seven US military personnel searching for American dead from the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese official said today. The Russian-made Mi-17 chartered from the Vietnamese air force's Northern Flight Service Co. crashed into a rocky hillside in central Vietnam yesterday afternoon, killing all on board. Hanoi's Foreign Ministry said seven Vietnamese crew and two officials died. All seven US citizens worked for the military. The US-Vietnamese team had been doing advance work for excavations to recover remains of some of the nearly 1,500 US citizens still listed as missing in action, or MIA, from the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. Police said all 16 bodies had been recovered from the crash site in Eo Tranh district, 450km south of Hanoi. They said they were being taken by road to the capital. A local government official said it had been very misty at the time of the crash and people had heard the engine labouring. The crash site was strewn with wreckage and the bodies badly burned, he added. The district official said the helicopter had been due to take off from the northern town of Vinh yesterday morning but had been delayed by poor visibility. It eventually left at 15.15 (08.15, UTC) for the central town of Hue. The flying time from Vinh to Eo Trach would have been about 25 minutes. The helicopter firm said the pilot was from the Vietnamese Air Force. He said the cause of the crash was being investigated. Vietnam's Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien issued a statement on Sunday expressing "deep condolences" to the Vietnamese and US families and to the US Government and people. Lt-Col. Franklin Childress, spokesman for the Hawaii-based MIA effort, Joint Task Force Full Accounting, said a US team was due in Hanoi to identify the US victims. They will try to repatriate the remains to Hawaii next week.

25 April 2001 – Bangkok

Qantas's failure to teach pilots how to land on wet runways and poor surveillance by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority have emerged as the main reasons for the airline's spectacular runway crash at Bangkok. In a leaked report, due out tomorrow, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) castigates Qantas and CASA over the accident on 23 September, 1999, and attacks the airline's drive to cut costs. The report identifies errors made by the captain and crew as the plane tried to land in a heavy rainstorm. Had they used reverse thrust on landing, the accident could have been averted. Even so, the report says most of the blame for Qantas's worst accident should be laid at the feet of the airline and CASA. Its 170 pages include gripping detail of conversations between the crew as the London-bound aircraft, with 410 passengers and crew on board, attempted an aborted landing, then reversed this decision. Instead, it landed and fish-tailed 3km down the runway of Dom Muang Airport, ending up in a golf course. No one was seriously injured, but the crash caused $100 million damage to the aircraft. The report, while criticising the failure to use reverse thrust, says the crew, led by one of the company's most experienced pilots, Captain Jack Fried, was merely following company policy. "As with other B747-400 pilots, the crew had not been provided with appropriate procedures and training to properly evaluate the potential effect of the weather conditions", the report says. "In particular, they were not sufficiently aware of the potential for aquaplaning and of the importance of reverse thrust as a stopping force on water-affected runways. That error was primarily due to the absence of appropriate company procedures and training." The report reveals that three years before the accident, Qantas had introduced new landing procedures and pilot training to "reduce costs", including brake maintenance and noise levy charges at Sydney Airport. But the company had not undertaken a proper risk assessment of the new procedures and their effect on safety. The report levels most of its criticism at Qantas's flight operations branch, claiming it was "reactive and informal rather than proactive and systematic". The design of the operational procedures relied too much on the decision-making ability of the crew and not enough on the structures in place. "Company-published information, procedures, and flight crew training for landing on water-affected runways was deficient", the report says. "Flight crew training in evaluating the procedural and configuration options for approach and landing was deficient." CASA, too, comes in for severe criticism, the report pointing to "significant latent failures". These included the regulations covering wet-weather landings, and emergency procedures and training. The report also highlights "deficient" surveillance of flight operations. "In 1998 and 1999, there were serious shortfalls in CASA's planned product-based surveillance of Qantas flight operations." The crew does not escape blame entirely. The report says the first officer had failed to fly "accurately" during the final approach into Bangkok, and questions Captain Fried's decision to cancel the attempt to abort the landing. It also criticises a decision by the crew not to immediately evacuate the aircraft upon landing: "The flight crew did not consider all relevant issues … Some crew members did not communicate important information during the emergency period."

1 May 2001 – Alaska Airlines N963AS

A federal judge ruled late today that an international treaty prevents victims of an Alaska Airlines crash last year from recovering punitive damages from the airline. US District Judge Charles Legge ruled that the Warsaw Convention does not allow air disaster victims to recover such damages. A total of 88 people were killed on 31 January 2000, when the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 (N963AS) crashed into the Pacific Ocean. As required under the treaty, Alaska Airlines has already paid $140,000 each to most of the victims' families, company officials have said. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the disaster and has not said what caused the crash. The investigation has focused on mechanics' decision not to replace a part that was wearing out. Attorneys for the victims' families still hope to pursue punitive damages in suits against Boeing Co. and McDonnell-Douglas Corp., the aircraft's manufacturers, which merged in 1997. They are accused of negligence in the design and manufacturing of the aircraft. Boeing attorneys have said the company denies liability. Alaska, which declined comment late today, has said it wants to settle the suits.

9 May 2001 – near Itanagar, India

The centre today ordered an inquiry into the Pawan Hans Ltd helicopter crash near Itanagar yesterday in which seven persons including Mr Dera Natung, Education Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, and Ms Nandita Judge, deputy managing director of the Times of India group and daughter of the TOI chairperson, Ms Indu Iain, were killed. The helicopter was on a special flight, although the purpose could not be immediately ascertained here. The Director-General Civil Aviation (DGCA), Mr H.S. Khola, has ordered an inquiry and appointed a DGCA official, Mr P. Shaw, as Inspector of the Accident under Rule 71 of Air Rules. The DGCA's Flight Operations Inspector (Helicopters), Captain V.K. Soni, and Regional (Kolkata) Controller of Air Safety, Mr Ramnath, will assist him. The team was despatched to the site by a commercial flight this morning. In addition, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) will probe the possibility of explosives on board or any sabotage. Among those dead are Ms L. Sangey, State Education Secretary, Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Mr V.K. Iain, social worker, Mr Nityanand Trehan, and Pawan Hans pilots, Group Captain V.K. Dhir, who was in command, and co-pilot Col. R.P. Singh. The helicopter's wreckage was located at a point 30m on road from Baluk Pong to Rupa. A ground party could reach the site by land route only today due to inclement weather. The bodies were found charred beyond recognition. They were brought to a military camp in the Thunga valley and later taken to Guwahati for identification. The Chief Minister, Mr Mukut Mithi, and the managing director of Pawan Hans, Maj.-Gen. A. Natarajan, also rushed to the spot. The helicopter, leased by the Government-owned Pawan Hans to the Arunachal Government, was to proceed to Baluk Pong, Rupa and Seppa and return to Itanagar. It took off from Itanagar at 11.30 yesterday and en route contacted the Tejpur Air Traffic Control at 11.40 at a cruising height of 6,000ft, when the pilot is reported to have sought change of route. Thereafter, it lost contact. Sources said a search was on for the cockpit voice recorder. The helicopter was being used as a commercial flight four times a week between Dibrugarh and Guwahati and twice a week for sorties to internal and remote areas. In the absence of any other commercial flights, the helicopter was virtually the lifeline of the State.

15 May 2001 – Gulf Air

Gulf Air said today it had agreed with its insurers to pay $125,000 in compensation for each adult and $75,000 for each child killed in last August's Gulf Air crash off Bahrain, in which all 143 people on board died. But Gulf Air Managing Director Ibrahim Abdullah al-Hammar told reporters at Cairo airport that the payments had been halted at the request of the Egyptian Government, which he said was demanding equal compensation for adults and minors. Hammar, who is also Under-Secretary for Civil Aviation at Bahrain's Communication Ministry, said Gulf Air was complying with European conventions in differentiating between adults and minors. He said he would meet Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Obeid tomorrow to discuss the issue. Gulf Air paid $25,000 per adult and $15,000 per child in initial compensation after the crash, Hammar said.

17 May 2001 – Northern Iran

A Yakovlev Yak-40 aircraft, carrying Iran's transport minister and six parliament members, crashed in northern Iran today, killing all 29 people on board, the Interior Ministry said. After disappearing early today, the aircraft was located several hours later in the mountains between Gorgan and Shahroud, about 200 miles north-east of Tehran, a ministry official said. Transport Minister Rahman Dadman and his delegation were on their way to Gorgan to inaugurate the city's airport, the local governor, Ali Asghar Ahmadi, said on state television. He said the airport control tower at Sari, 155 miles north-east of Tehran, lost contact with the pilot after a final communication at 07.38. "The pilot said that because of bad weather, they were heading back to Tehran", Ahmadi said. It was raining heavily at the time. Authorities searched for the aircraft using helicopters, aircraft and boats, as Sari and Gorgan lie near the Caspian Sea. The aircraft was operated by Faraz Qeshm Airlines, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

19 May 2001 – Search parties recovered the bodies of Iran's transport minister and the 29 other victims of the crash of a Russian-built Yakovlev Yak-40 in north-eastern Iran, Tehran radio reported today. The bodies have been taken to Tehran for a mass funeral tomorrow outside the Majlis, or parliament, the state-run radio said. The minister, Rahman Dadman, and seven legislators were flying to the north-eastern city of Gorgan to inaugurate its airport on Thursday (17 May) when their aircraft crashed in heavy rain into a mountain about 250km north-east of Tehran. Conflicting reports had put the number of people on board the aircraft at between 29 and 32 people, but state-run media gave a final count of 30 people today. Some 1,500 rescue workers recovered the bodies and the aircraft's black box.

20 May 2001 – Palawan Island, The Philippines

Up to 13 people are reported to have been killed in two helicopter crashes in The Philippines. Six died in the first accident when a private helicopter crashed and exploded into flames on the western island of Palawan. Then a military helicopter sent to pick up the bodies also crashed. The Air Force helicopter had just taken off from Palawan to return to base when its propellers caught on to something, bringing the craft disastrously back to earth. Reports say the helicopter's seven-member rescue team all died. Investigators are trying to determine the cause of both incidents.

23 May 2001 – Florida Everglades, N904VJ

Five years after a ValuJet aircraft (McDonnell Douglas DC-9 N904VJ) crashed in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 on board, an aircraft maintenance contractor yesterday agreed to pay $1.75 million to settle allegations that it had illegally placed hazardous material on board the aircraft. Although the Federal Aviation Administration had proposed a $2.25 million fine against SabreTech, a spokesman lauded the settlement, calling it the largest amount ever assessed in a hazardous materials case. A representative of the now-defunct company noted the settlement did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing, but said "no useful purpose was served by litigating this case further". SabreTech attorney Kenneth P. Quinn also called on the Miami-Dade County State Attorney's Office to drop murder and manslaughter charges against SabreTech, which is scheduled for trial in October. ValuJet Flight 592 crashed on 11 May 1996, shortly after departing Miami International Airport en route to Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Investigators believe the aircraft caught fire because SabreTech employees shipped improperly-packaged and improperly-labelled oxygen generators on board. Investigators concluded SabreTech employees packed and delivered 100 oxygen generator canisters to a ValuJet ramp agent who loaded them on the aircraft. They said the devices were improperly packed and mislabelled as empty when many were not. In addition, federal investigators found many of the canisters were missing safety caps. As part of the settlement, the FAA agreed to drop ten of its original 37 allegations that SabreTech violated Department of Transportation rules governing the handling of hazardous materials.