-Caveat Lector-
Flight 990 probe turns to jet's thrust reversers
By John Schmeltzer and Michael J. Berens
Tribune Staff Writers
November 1, 1999
Years after operators of Boeing 767 aircraft were supposed to
have modified the jets, an EgyptAir plane similar to the one
involved in Sunday's fatal crash suffered accidental deployment
of an engine thrust reverser during flight. The thrust reverser,
a device meant to slow a plane after landing, is never supposed
to be used in the air. After a Boeing 767 accident that killed
223 people in Thailand in 1991, the aircraft manufacturer and the
Federal Aviation Administration notified all operators of the
plane that the device should be modified.
Yet in 1997, an EgyptAir 767 was damaged when a thrust reverser
activated over Tanzania, according to records of a company that
tracks insurance claims involving airlines. Investigators
currently are trying to determine why EgyptAir Flight 990, also a
Boeing 767, crashed off Nantucket Island, killing 217.
Investigators emphasized they will not know what caused Sunday's
crash for weeks or even months, and Boeing has declined to
speculate on the cause. Jim Hall, chairman of the National
Transportation Safety Board, told reporters he did not know
whether modifications to the thrust reversers had been completed
on the EgyptAir airliner that crashed Sunday. "That is
information we are gathering today and we will have that
available tomorrow," said Hall.
Search and rescue operations at the crash site off Nantucket
Island switched on Monday to salvage efforts ahead of a storm
that is forecast for the area. While locating and recovering
pieces of debris and one human body, the Coast Guard said it also
had picked up signals from one of the two "black box" flight-data
recorders aboard the downed Boeing 767.
Records from Airclaims Ltd., a London-based aviation consulting
company that works with insurance companies to investigate
aircraft accidents, show that on May 25, 1997, on a flight from
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to Cairo, a thrust reverser accidentally
deployed during a flight of a Boeing 767-200, damaging a wing and
door. The flight, with 145 people on board, managed to land
safely, the Airclaims report said.
The 767-200 is a slightly smaller version of the Boeing 767-300ER
that crashed Sunday into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket.
Airclaims is a private firm that maintains a computerized data
base of aviation incidents. The company's records indicate
EgyptAir has filed 34 claims dating back to 1956. Each incident
represents major damage or loss of a plane. In 25 such incidents,
insurers declared the planes total losses.
EgyptAir was not required to modify the thrust reversers because
it is not a U.S. carrier and is therefore beyond the reach of
directives from the FAA. The thrust reversers have come under
renewed scrutiny because the EgyptAir 767-300ER that crashed
Sunday was built alongside the 767-300ER that crashed in May 1991
in Thailand after the thrust reverser inadvertently deployed,
killing everyone aboard.
On Boeing jets the thrust reversers, along with the brakes, slow
the jet after landing. A door on the engine pod slides open,
simultaneously extending panels that redirect the air flow. In
flight, the door is supposed to remain closed with the panels
retracted and locked.
Investigators of the fatal Thai crash said the accidental
deployment of a thrust reverser flipped the plane, breaking off
the aircraft's tail and sending the plane into an uncontrolled
plunge into the jungle from 24,700 feet. According to Boeing,
more than 2,000 Boeing 747, 757, 767 and 737 aircraft were built
with the same type of thrust-reverser system as the one found in
the Lauda Air 767 that crashed in Thailand.
Both the ill-fated Lauda Air and EgyptAir planes came off the
production line in Everett, Wash., within days of each other in
September 1989, during one of the most turbulent employment
periods in Boeing's history. Machinists struck the company only
days after assembly of the two planes was completed. The workers
complained they were under stress from working too much overtime,
and could not do their jobs properly.
One jet was delivered to Lauda Air, an Austrian carrier that
began operating in 1979. The other was sent to state-owned
EgyptAir. Boeing says all of its 767s were fixed so that the
reverse thrusters would not operate in flight.
"The fleet was 100 percent modified," said Gary Lesser, a
spokesman for Boeing's 747, 767, and 777 production plant.
Maged el-Masri, EgyptAir vice president for technical affairs,
also said Monday that EgyptAir 767s did have the required
modifications.
The investigation of the Lauda Air crash concluded that the
thrust-reverser malfunction during flight gave pilots only
seconds to react before losing all control of the plane.
Pilots could not maintain "controlled flight unless full wheel
and full rudder were applied within 4 to 6 seconds after the
thrust reverser deployed," according to the findings of the Lauda
Air investigation. "Recovery was not possible if corrective
action was delayed beyond 6 seconds." There were other
similarities between the two crashes, though they were eight
years apart.
Like EgyptAir's cockpit crew, Lauda Air Capt. Thomas Welch, a
Seattle native, and Austrian First Officer Josef Thurner issued
no distress signals. The Lauda jet's cockpit voice recorder
captured Thurner saying, "Ah, reverser's deployed," followed
moments later by sounds of the jet breaking apart.
In Sunday's crash, the twin-aisle 767 disappeared from radar 33
minutes after leaving New York's John F. Kennedy airport. The
plane plunged from 33,000 feet to 19,100 feet in 36 seconds.
There was no radio contact from the pilots after their last
routine contact with air traffic controllers, said the NTSB's
Hall. Radar similarly tracked the Lauda jet careening from 24,700
feet to about 8,000 feet--3.1 miles--in less than 30 seconds.
>From sounds captured in the final hundredth of a second on the
cockpit voice recorder, investigators deciphered the jet breaking
up at speed and forces it was not designed to withstand.
"The similarities certainly scream out between this crash and
Lauda Air," said Terry Ford, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based aviation
consultant who helped investigate the Lauda Air crash for
victims' families.
Thai investigators in 1991 initially thought a terrorist bomb
brought down the Lauda jet. In the weeks following the accident,
speculation on the cause ranged from catastrophic engine failure
to spontaneous combustion of a crate of lithium wristwatches in
the cargo hold.
Adding to the confusion was the fact that the airplane crashed in
a remote jungle hillside 130 miles from Bangkok, and villagers
looted the wreckage. However, a crucial piece of evidence emerged
when the left engine was recovered with its thrust reverser in a
fully deployed position. Reversers slow a jetliner by diverting
engine thrust forward, and are designed to be used only on the
ground as a supplement to the wheel brakes.
Airline owner Niki Lauda, a seasoned pilot, experienced a
reverser deployment in a Boeing 767 simulator after the Thailand
crash.
Lauda told reporters after the simulation that, upon deploying
the left reverser, the simulator twisted and flipped completely
over to its left in a couple of seconds. A few seconds more and
it was careening, nose aimed down.
"You're suddenly upside down in a dive," Lauda said. "There's
nothing you can do. It turns over, then it goes nose down. You go
right into overspeed, and then you lose all of your controls. The
airplane broke up at exactly 17 seconds after it went out of
control."
Tribune correspondent Mike Dorning contributed to this report
from Newport, R.I. Knight Ridder/Tribune news service also
contributed.
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