Neglect and Failures Imperil Small Cargo Flights

Dec. 24--After his cargo plane crashed aside a North Carolina prison in near darkness, all eyes turned toward pilot John "Skip" Wilkens. First the prison guards, who pulled their weapons, fearing he was trying to spring an inmate. Then inspectors, who suspected Wilkens was at fault.

There were few other explanations for the Piper falling from the sky starved of fuel. "I screwed up," the former Marine Corps pilot convinced himself.

Thirty-four days later the same plane crashed, again starved of fuel, with a different pilot -- Brian Keith Hardee, who was bruised and scarred. Only then was the true culprit found for both crashes: a faulty pump, which deprived the engine of fuel. Worse, the mechanical breakdown had been missed by inspectors for the company and the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Keith's accident should never have happened," Wilkens said. "Every time I see him and look at the scars on his face, I am very, very upset."

The case is emblematic of an industry fraught with faulty maintenance, shoddy equipment, company errors and lax FAA oversight, endangering pilots and the public. The air cargo industry has evolved into the deadliest form of commercial aviation in the United States, with nearly one fatal crash a month, The Miami Herald revealed in July.

But a review of nonfatal accidents -- with most fuselages intact and pilots alive to tell the story -- reveals even more problems in a perilous industry.

INCIDENTS MOUNT

Air cargo planes have been in 166 nondeadly U.S. accidents since 2000, the newspaper found, injuring 59 people, 21 seriously, in a business that has long resisted major safety reforms.

Some were as simple as a plane's nose clipping an object on the runway or skidding in snow. Yet others were serious crashes that left pilots in the hospital and barely averted tragedy on the ground.

The newspaper found:

--In one of every 10 accidents, the planes were deprived of fuel -- "fuel starvation" or "fuel exhaustion" in government parlance.

One splashed down on Sunny Isles Beach. Another pilot lost power in the air in Ohio and, avoiding homes and schools, crashed in a cornfield and broke his pelvis.

The problem has persisted so long the FAA was pressed 15 years ago to issue more directives telling pilots how to deal with fuel emergencies. The agency refused, and planes continue to fall dry from the sky.

--In one of every four accidents, planes suffered mechanical failings that had gone undetected by company ground crews or FAA inspectors, the newspaper found.

In 15 cases, maintenance crews signed off on inspections only to have the plane crash hours later with mechanical defects -- long-deteriorating landing gears, engine pistons and propeller blades.

--Some operators encountered so many maintenance problems the FAA hit them with fines, records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show. Yet the operators continued to fly and crash.

Larry's Flying Service, a carrier in Alaska, a bustling cargo state that is home to more than a quarter of all nonfatal accidents, has been fined nine times since 1990 -- with three accidents since 2000 and a fatality in 1999.

THE FAA'S FOCUS

To safety experts, these trends are no surprise: The FAA devotes most resources to passenger planes, leaving small cargo carriers, which transport everything from business letters to car parts to medical supplies, to operate largely under an honor system.

More than a dozen times, accidents were caused by flawed landing gear or propellers. In 12 cases, shoddy maintenance and company oversight were cited as factors.

Those deficiencies -- coming on planes that average 27 years -- create breakdowns that lead to accidents, a sequence of failings that rarely occur in more tightly regulated airlines.

"It's a lot easier for things to slide by," said John J. Goglia, who served on the National Transportation Safety Board from 1995-2004. "It just sort of sits there and waits for the right set of circumstances to go wrong."