NTSB Stands by 1967 Report of Crash that Claimed 82 Lives

Feb. 9 -- The National Transportation Safety Board has decided to uphold the probable cause it found 40 years ago for a midair collision over Hendersonville, N.C., that killed 82 people -- despite arguments made by a Spartanburg man that those findings were faulty.

Amateur historian Paul Houle spent years investigating the collision of a Piedmont Airlines 727 and a Cessna 310 on July 19, 1967 -- the worst crash in the history of the airline, one that left, in the words of a witness, "bodies scattered all over the landscape."

In March 2005, Houle petitioned the NTSB to reopen its investigation, which originally blamed the crew of the small Cessna for causing the crash.

Houle argued that the agency's original findings ignored the fact the Cessna pilot reported his heading, which should have alerted the air traffic controller of a problem; did not mention a fire in a cockpit ashtray that preoccupied the Piedmont crew the 35 seconds leading up to the collision; and was compromised because the lead NTSB investigator was the brother of a Piedmont vice president.

More than a year after Houle filed his petition, the NTSB agreed to re-evaluate its original findings. In September 2006, U.S. Airways, which now carries Piedmont under its umbrella, filed an inch-thick report -- one that included 40-year-old documents that even the Safety Board no longer had -- dismissive of Houle's findings.

No other parties filed a response.

In a Feb. 2 letter, the NTSB notified Houle it had voted 3-1 that his arguments were unsubstantiated.

"We wanted a new investigation on this," Houle said. "We didn't want them to review an investigation that's 40 years old. We figured that we'd have a new investigation, one that was impartial."

Houle in particular cited a recording of air traffic that the original NTSB report cited as having a 4-second gap at the exact time the Cessna pilot reported his heading -- despite a transcript by the Bureau of Standards that the agency had made no mention of it.

In its latest ruling, the NTSB fell back on its original decision that those few seconds were "garbled."

Houle said he was disappointed current technology wasn't used to re-analyze that recording.

The latest NTSB letter also lists the cockpit ashtray fire in the Piedmont jet as inconsequential, as that crew had been laughing about it, and dismissed the relationship between its investigator to the Piedmont executive, stating "many staff members, not just the investigator in charge, contributed to the report, and the board members concurred with the findings and probable cause and adopted the report."

When told of the NTSB's decision, Morgan Durrant, a U.S. Airways spokesman in Tempe, Ariz., said, "We haven't received official notice from them yet, but we would be pleased to hear that investigation was closed, and that no fault was found on the part of our predecessor airline."

Of the five-member NTSB board, Vice Chairman Robert Sumwalt, who lives in Columbia, did not participate in the vote. (Sumwalt was a pilot for 24 years for Piedmont and, later, U.S. Airways.)

Board member Deborah Hersman voted to pursue the reconsideration of past findings, though she did not give a reason why.

An NTSB spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the four voting board members would, one at a time, review the documents related to the collision, make notes and cast their vote, and then pass the documents along to the next member to do the same.

In other words, no central meeting was held, no discussion of the vote was held and no minutes or other documents exist to shed light on the decision other than the letter Houle received.

The Herald-Journal attempted to reach Hersman late Thursday, but was unable.

Houle said his involvement in this matter has reached its conclusion.

Any further steps would have to be taken by the surviving family members of the men and women who died in the collision.

"I'm disappointed obviously, but all they did was reaffirm evidence from 40 years ago -- evidence that was collected by the brother of a Piedmont vice president," Houle said.

"They haven't diminished the controversy. They've increased the controversy."

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