Flight 1420 crash inquiry winding down with airline, pilots' union still at odds

— The inquiry into what caused American Airlines Flight 1420 to crash in Little Rock on June 1, 1999, is nearly complete. A draft of the final report has been written, and the National Transportation Safety Board expects to announce its findings by September.

What the report will say is anyone's guess. Almost everything that could have gone wrong that night did.

The plane was late; a storm was breaking, and the pilots were tired. The runway the pilots expected to land on was closed, and the safety-overrun area of the runway they were cleared for wasn't long enough if they got into trouble. The plane landed askew; the spoilers didn't work; the brakes weren't applied quickly enough, and the engines were throttled back too far for conditions. When the plane overran the runway, the steel poles supporting the runway lights were supposed to break away but didn't.

None of those details is really in dispute. How the safety board will sort them in placing blame for the crash is to be seen.

To that end, the safety board invited each of the parties to the investigation -- the airline, the air-traffic controllers, the airport and others -- to offer its interpretation of the evidence. At least three have.

The airline blames the pilots' failure to arm the spoilers. In other words: pilot error.

The pilots' union blames the weather and pilot fatigue. It contends that American should not have allowed the plane to land. In other words: company policy.

The distinction could have momentous effects in the courtroom as passengers seek compensatory and punitive damages. The crash killed 11 people, including the pilot, and most of the 129 surviving passengers were injured.

The investigation, which has lasted 25 months, was delayed when chief investigator Greg Feith quit the agency this spring, but it is not clear how much it was set back.

"I don't have a feeling for where he left off and where others picked up," said Paul Schlamm, safety board spokesman.

Thomas Haueter, a deputy director of the office of aviation safety, is in charge now. Inviting others to submit their findings appears to be a final gathering of facts. In the past three weeks, Haueter has heard from American, the Allied Pilots Association and Boeing, a party to the investigation because it purchased McDonnell Douglas Corp., which manufactured the airplane.

The submissions were voluntary, Schlamm said, adding that each will be evaluated and added to the final docket.

Both American and Boeing focused on the airplane's spoiler system, but with different slants on the evidence. The MD-82 had six spoilers -- wing panels that raise to slow the plane and kill its lift.

Within hours of the crash, investigators were confident the spoilers hadn't worked as they should have. They are designed to deploy automatically, so long as the pilot arms them after lowering the landing gear. But 1420's cockpit checklist didn't show that had been done, and the arming lever was found to be in the wrong position.

American concluded that failure of the spoilers to deploy "was the probable cause of the accident. The aircraft would have stopped on the runway if the ground spoilers had deployed."

American said they did not deploy because "the flight crew failed to arm the autospoiler system due to distractions associated with an increase in cockpit workload that interrupted the crew's performance" on the prelanding checklist.

The airline concluded that the pilots' decisions to fly into bad weather and to land in Little Rock did not cause the accident, noting that "the aircraft landed on the runway, within the designated touchdown zone, close to the runway centerline, and essentially on speed" and that "the aircraft would have stopped on the runway, without incident, if the ground spoilers had deployed."

It said the thunderstorm breaking at the airport contributed to the accident, heightening the pilots' workload and making it harder to brake, but did not cause it.

It also rejected the suggestion that the pilots were fatigued.

A crew may fly no more than eight hours between rest stops. Pilot Richard Buschmann and co-pilot Michael Origel had a flight time of 7 hours, 49 minutes.

Under American's contract with the pilots union, crew members are limited to 14 hours of on-duty time between rest periods. Buschmann had been on duty 13 hours, 13 minutes; Origel 13 hours, 43 minutes.

Both, American said, were "fully in compliance with the flight-time requirements."

Boeing, too, concluded that "the available runway length would have been sufficient had the spoilers been deployed." It found nothing wrong with the spoiler system, and said that if it had been armed, the plane would have stopped even in rainy conditions.

Boeing juxtaposed the details of Flight 1420 with American Flight 9503, an MD-83 that overran the runway in Palm Springs, Calif., after a Feb. 16, 2000, rainstorm.

In both events, the spoilers did not deploy after touchdown, causing reduced weight on the landing gear and increased stopping distance.

The spoiler arming lever was set for the Palm Springs landing, which caused no injuries and only minor damage to the plane. For some unexplained reason, Boeing said, the spoilers disengaged and disarmed.

Origel has told the safety board that he thought Buschmann had armed the spoilers on Flight 1420, and readings on the flight-data recorder indicate the spoilers fully extended for a second or two at touchdown before retracting. There was no explanation or mention of that in either Boeing or American's report.

The pilots union's report acknowledges that the spoilers on 1420 didn't work as they were meant to, but spins the crash differently.

The plane touched down at 11:50 p.m., past the pilots' normal bedtimes, and they were beyond tired, the union said. It contended it was clear by Buschmann's speech patterns that he was concentrating so hard on landing in the storm that he may have overlooked some cockpit procedures.

It also said the pilots didn't get all the information they needed about the deteriorating weather, that there was "no requirement or practical mechanism" to warn them. And it contended the they were not adequately trained to use their on-board radar.

"Every airline pilot knows, stated or not, that the delivery of the passengers and crew to their destination is the mission. The operator, regulators, airport and crew failed to safely accomplish this task. In the case of the flight crew, the warnings and incomplete information available for decision making were clouded by unadulterated fatigue," the union found.

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