Saturday, April 24, 2004
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AIR TANKER ACCIDENTS: NTSB pinpoints crash cause

Agency blames deadly firefighting incidents on inadequate maintenance procedures

A sequence of images taken from television, videotaped by Tim Ill of KOLO-TV in Reno, shows a C-130A aircraft piloted by Steve Wass crashing on June 17, 2002, near Walker, Calif. Photos by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Click image for enlargement.

Federal regulators said Friday that inadequate maintenance of aging aircraft is to blame in three fatal firefighting accidents over the past decade, including the 2002 crash of a Nevada-based air tanker.

The year before the first of those crashes, the U.S. Forest Service and the aviation companies it contracts with to fight wildfires rejected as too expensive the adoption of safety measures that might have prevented the accidents, according to reports released Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

"We hope the release of these reports will raise operator awareness of the unique problems that affect these specialized aircraft, and the importance of a thorough maintenance program to detect safety issues and prevent accidents," NTSB Chairman Ellen Engleman Conners said.

The Washington, D.C.-based safety board ruled that fatigue cracks caused the wings to snap off a C-130A on June 17, 2002, just south of the Nevada state line in Walker, Calif., shortly after its takeoff from the Douglas County Airport in Minden.

The subsequent crash killed pilot Steven Wass, 42, of Gardnerville; co-pilot Craig Labare, 36, of Loomis, Calif.; and flight engineer Michael Davis, 59, of Bakersfield, Calif.

In two other reports released Friday, the NTSB said similar wing fractures are also to blame in the August 1994 downing of a C-130 in Pearblossom, Calif., and the July 2002 crash of a similar air tanker in Estes Park. Colo. Those firefighting accidents claimed five lives.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Interior and the Air Force all agreed in 1993 that the Forest Service should improve C-130 maintenance and implement inspections that might detect such stress fractures.

The Interior Department officials had safety concerns about their contractors using C-130s to dump retardant on wildfires as early as 1991, the NTSB investigation found. Most of the planes had been built in the 1950s and purchased by private companies after being retired from military service.

"The problem here is that the military-level maintenance is considerably more rigorous than what was going on with these airplanes now," said William Waldock, a professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. "Typically, when private companies are flying them, they're not being inspected at the same intervals. They're not opening up panels and looking inside or doing the X-rays to look for cracks."

But only months before the first of the three crashes, the Forest Service and its private contractors objected "on the basis of the potential economic impact of these requirements," one NTSB report states.

The Forest Service grounded its C-130s a few months after the 2002 crashes, but later developed a new safety inspection program and reactivated the aircraft for firefighting.

But the safety board said Friday that the agency's maintenance and inspection programs remain insufficient considering the age of the aircraft and the severe stress they endure in fighting fires.

The panel recommended the development of new maintenance and inspection programs that include consideration of the airplane's original design, age, and operational stresses, as well as engineering evaluations to predict and prevent fatigue cracking. The NTSB also called for government agencies that handle firefighting to hire personnel with aviation engineering and maintenance expertise to oversee the programs.

"The resistance is going to be economic again," said Waldock, associate director of the Center for Aerospace Safety Education. "Some of these operators are going to be forced out of business because this is very expensive."

Rose Davis, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said the criticism that the Forest Service failed to adopt safety measures that could have prevented the crashes is misguided.

The Forest Service contracts with companies to obtain aircraft for firefighting, and those companies are responsible for the safety and any inspections they deem necessary, she said.

"The responsibility to do maintenance and inspections belongs to the contractor," said Davis, a Forest Service employee.

"The contractor is supposed to tell us in a bid how much they want for service, plus the airplane and pilot," she said. "Those costs should have been rolled into the bid. The Forest Service does not have the experience to do that."

Davis also said the report recommendations echo those in a blue ribbon panel on aerial firefighting issued in 2003 by the Interior Department and the Forest Service.

The company that owned the tanker in the Walker crash, Greybull, Wyo.-based Hawkins and Powers Aviation, still contracts with the Forest Service and has a contract this year, Davis said.

The company supplies mainly helicopters now, she said.

A Hawkins and Powers official said the company would be issuing a statement on the NTSB findings Monday.

Stephens Capital Bureau writer Sean Whaley contributed to this report.