The Mystery of Flight 427

by Bill Adair

  That had become the central question in the investigation: Was the crash caused by man or machine? As other theories were ruled out, Boeing and ALPA began to differ about why the rudder had moved. Boeing kept raising the possibility that the pilots had mistakenly stomped on the pedal, whereas ALPA kept suggesting the rudder system had malfunctioned.

  The small number of measurements on flight data recorders was a function of money. If it were up to the NTSB, every airplane in the United States would be required to have 300-parameter boxes immediately. But the airlines balked at that request because it cost tens of thousands of dollars to equip each plane with the more advanced recorders. It wasn’t that the boxes were any more expensive. The recorder on Flight 427 could easily have handled dozens of additional parameters. It was the multitude of new sensors and wiring that ran up the cost. Because the 737 was a relatively basic airplane with steel cables that moved the flight controls, it was costly to install sensors. A newer, fly-by-wire plane could be equipped with a sophisticated flight recorder more cheaply because the sensors and computers were already there.

  Boeing assigned some of its smartest aerodynamic engineers to perform a kinematic analysis of the crash. Their goal was to take the undisputed facts from the thirteen measurements in the flight recorder and come up with estimates for things the box did not record, such as movement of the wheel and the rudder. The job was even tougher because the plane had been bounced around by the wake from the Delta 727. There was no doubt that the wake had jostled the USAir plane, but it was up to the engineers to figure out which movements were caused by the wake and which were caused by the ailerons and rudder.

  The debate about why the rudder moved was fueled by the fact that 737 pilots rarely used it in flight. Pilots of smaller planes had to use the rudder during turns, but the aerodynamics of the 737 were different, and there was no need to use the rudder during a turn. Pilots used it primarily for landings in strong crosswinds and in the rare case of engine failure.

  To help sort out what had happened to Flight 427’s rudder, the NTSB and Boeing decided to try a technique known as a backdrive. Engineers took the numbers from the flight data recorder and fed them into the computer that ran Boeing’s M-Cab flight simulator. The M in “M-Cab” stood for “multipurpose,” which meant the simulator was a chameleon. It could be programmed to perform like any Boeing jet. M-Cab was usually used for dull engineering tests, but this time it would be used to re-create the crash and see how 132 people had died.

  It was a ghost flight. The plane would roll and twist the same way it had on September 8, as if the pilots were still at the controls. The instruments would spin the same way they had in Ship 513, and the control column would move back and forth as if Emmett were still pulling on it, trying to prevent the crash.

  In a cavernous room three stories high, M-Cab stood like a long-legged elephant with a Boeing logo on the side. Its legs resembled huge shock absorbers, allowing the cab to rock back and forth so pilots believed they were flying. It was built to fool the pilots, using gravity, motion, sound, and computer displays to give a realistic sensation of flight. There was a sense of danger when M-Cab was about to start, as if the big beast might go crazy, fall off its legs, and crash to the ground. That was especially true with the Flight 427 work because in order to simulate the deadly plunge of the plane, Boeing had to push back the mechanical safety stops that limited how far M-Cab could go.

  The brains of the beast were in a computer room next door, where technicians controlled the cab. Computers the size of refrigerators were lined up at one end of the room. At the other end, technicians and engineers could watch the white cab and talk to the pilots through an intercom. Pilots referred to the Flight 427 simulation as “rock and roll.” They often began the rides by saying, “Let ’er rip.”

  Haueter walked across the ramp to the white cab and climbed into the mock cockpit. He was curious to find out what the ride would show. He had studied charts about what had happened to Flight 427 dozens of times, but it would be much better to feel what the pilots had encountered instead of looking at lines on a piece of paper.

  He knew the pilots had made a crucial mistake. They pulled back on the control column at a critical time, and that made the plane stall. Had they just pushed the stick forward and let the plane lose some altitude, they probably could have prevented the crash. Also, the pilots had not acted quickly enough to turn the wheel completely to the right, which might have countered the effects of a rudder hardover, regardless of whether it was caused by man or machine.

  Haueter was not shy about blaming pilots. He had gone toe to toe with ALPA on the 1988 crash of Delta Flight 1141 in Dallas—Fort Worth, and he’d been amazed at how ridiculous the union had been, claiming there was some kind of malfunction of the plane that caused it to crash a few seconds after takeoff. But Haueter and the other investigators were convinced that the pilots had simply forgotten to set the flaps, the panels on the wings that gave the plane extra lift so it could get off the runway. Haueter had also blamed pilots for a crash in Hawaii—the guy flew right into a cliff—and one in Alabama in which the pilots got hopelessly lost. Yet he was still skeptical about whether Emmett or Germano would have stomped on the pedal and held it there. Good pilots—especially ones with thousands of hours like Emmett and Germano—just didn’t do that.

  Haueter took the right seat, where Emmett had sat. He reached below to a lever and adjusted the seat until his feet could reach the rudder pedals. He was about to see how 132 people had died, but he would not get choked up about it. He coped with the gruesome side of his job by building a big emotional wall. The facts got in, but the horror stayed out. Still, he expected it would be a bumpy ride and figured he would get a good jolt from the G-forces.

  The cockpit looked the same way it had to Emmett and Germano. The altimeter read 6,360 feet. The airspeed indicator read 190 knots. Looking through the cockpit window, Haueter could see blue and green squares that were supposed to represent Hopewell Township and the surrounding area. Jim Kerrigan, a Boeing engineer riding with Haueter, told the M-Cab technicians that they were ready. Flight 427 began again.

  M-Cab descended from 6,300 feet and banked slightly to the left. Haueter heard the steady click-click-click of the rudder trim. It felt like a routine turn. Boeing did not have a copy of the cockpit tape, but Haueter had heard it so many times he knew what the pilots would say at each moment. Oh, yeah, I see zuh Jetstream. Sheeez. Thump. Whoa. The cab jerked to the left and then back again, rattling the metal seats and panels and tossing Haueter left and right. Hang on, hang on. Another jerk to the left and then the whoop-whoop-whoop of the autopilot warning horn. Haueter had been watching the computer image of a blue sky and hazy horizon out the cockpit window, but suddenly all he could see was the green and blue squares of the ground, looming closer. Hang on. Ohhh, shiiiiit. What the hell is this!!? He had his hands lightly on the control column and felt it come back, as if the phantom pilots were trying to pull the nose up to avoid certain death. He felt the stickshaker go off like a jackhammer, warning that the plane was stalling. He was almost face down now, watching the ground spin closer and closer. Oh shit! Pull! The jackhammer continued rat-a-tat-tat-rat-a-tat all the way down, until the ground filled the windscreen God! Pulllllllll! and the cab jerked to a stop. Noooo.

  As violent as the end was, Haueter was surprised that the initial yaw and roll were so smooth. He had expected to get bounced around more severely before he was rolled to the left. But the whole thing happened seamlessly and fast. They were making a routine turn like they had thousands of times, and twenty-eight seconds later they were dead.

  Haueter flew it again. He let the machine jerk him back and forth as he looked for some sort of cue that would have triggered Emmett or Germano to stomp on the rudder pedal. A 737 pilot might use the rudder in a crisis, to quickly counteract a roll. But in that case a pilot most likely would step quickly on the pedal and let it out—not hold it down all the way to his death. As the phantom
pilot again pulled the stick back, Haueter searched for a reason they might have held the rudder.

  He couldn’t think of one.

  He flew it ten more times. The more he flew, the more unlikely it seemed to him that Emmett or Germano had stomped on the rudder pedal. There were a few bumps from the wake, but nothing that would make them press the rudder all the way. Instead, it felt like an aerobatic move called a spin entry. A stunt pilot deliberately held the rudder in and pulled back on the stick so the plane would flip out of the sky and corkscrew toward the ground.

  Haueter unsnapped his seat belt and climbed out of the chair. As he walked out of the simulator, he was even more convinced. Nothing had happened to Flight 427 that would have made a seasoned pilot stomp on the pedal.

  Within days of the crash, families of the victims of Flight 427 were inundated with mailings from lawyers.

  “It is most difficult to intrude into your life at this time, but you do need help, not only spiritual, but legal as well,” wrote the Cleveland firm of Miller, Stillman, and Bartel. The letter promised the firm would “only accept five families from any one disaster, as each family is entitled to our utmost time and individual attention.” Included was an ad that listed the death and injury cases the firm had handled—planes, trains, automobiles, even “slips and falls.”

  Brett received mailings from about thirty lawyers. He piled them on his office floor in a two-foot stack. A few were downright tacky. One lawyer sent a refrigerator magnet. Another sent a videotape.

  “First I want to offer my sincere condolences,” Houston lawyer John O’Quinn said on the five-minute tape. “I realize that sudden losses such as this are very difficult to deal with, and unfortunately at this time your mind is probably not prepared to make certain important decisions which unfortunately must be made.” The tape apparently had been recorded specifically for families of the Flight 427 victims. “I assure you that USAir already has its attorneys working on the case… in the best interests of USAir and not necessarily in your best interests.” Newspaper headlines flashed on the screen showing examples of his firm’s victories, followed by a toll-free phone number that families could call.

  For a trial lawyer, a plane crash case is a sure thing. It’s not a question of whether a plaintiff such as Brett will win, but how much he’ll win. As in other types of personal injury cases, the lawyers usually work on contingency, getting paid only when their clients win. (Which means that, in airline cases, the lawyers always get paid.) The contingency fees are typically 15 to 25 percent, although some lawyers get as much as 35 percent.

  The settlements are based on the odd practice of determining the price of a human life. To people outside the legal system, it seems cold and insensitive to try to translate a human life into dollars and cents. How could USAir and Boeing possibly repay Brett for the love he shared with Joan? How could they put a dollar value on her life? But by filing a lawsuit against them, Brett was seeking money as compensation for her death, which meant the court would have to determine what Joan was worth.

  Much of the money came not from the airlines and aircraft manufacturers but from their insurance companies, which meant that lawsuits from a crash had little direct effect on an airline’s bottom line. USAir had $850 million in coverage spread among seven companies in the United States, England, and France. The largest, Associated Aviation Underwriters of Short Hills, New Jersey, had 30 percent of the coverage and would be the lead insurer to handle claims on the policy and negotiations with the victims’ lawyers. It’s likely that those seven companies had gone to the insurance markets in London and gotten “reinsurance” on the policy, which spread the risk among more investors. USAir has never disclosed how much it paid for this coverage, but the trade journal National Underwriter reported that insurers canceled and renegotiated USAir’s coverage after the Charlotte crash—one month before the Hopewell accident—to raise rates or extend the payment schedule. The journal referred to USAir as the “hapless carrier.”

  Boeing had its own coverage, probably with some of the same companies that USAir did, but Boeing did not publicly discuss details of its insurance and, unlike USAir, it was not required to file a statement of coverage with the government. USAir and Boeing also would not say how they would divide their liability for the crash. In previous cases, airlines and aircraft manufacturers have often started with a certain split, say fifty-fifty, and then revised the proportion as it became clear which company was more at fault.

  Although many people criticized lawyers for soliciting clients after a disaster, Brett found that the mailings were helpful in that they explained the process of a wrongful death case. He didn’t know much about the legal system, and the information that he received answered many questions. But ultimately he decided to go with Corboy Demetrio Clifford, a Chicago firm that had not sent him a single piece of mail. The firm, which had been recommended by his father’s lawyer, was so well known for aviation cases that it did not need to solicit clients. Its offices took up two floors in a tower at 33 North Dearborn Street, across from the Cook County court building. The walls and cabinets in the law firm were polished mahogany, the desks were marble. The firm won so much for its aviation cases that it could afford a lot of mahogany.

  The firm was headed by one of the city’s most famous trial lawyers, a white-haired legend named Philip Corboy. He was famous for winning millions for clients—$25 million for the family of a passenger killed in the 1989 United Airlines crash in Sioux City, Iowa, and nearly three hundred other verdicts and settlements for $1 million or more. A competitor called him “the Hoover vacuum of the personal injury business.” Brett met Corboy briefly, but ended up dealing primarily with partners Robert Clifford and Michael Demetrio.

  They didn’t waste a minute filing Brett’s suit. Within hours after he signed the contract to hire them on October 12, his suit was hand-carried across Dearborn Street to the clerk’s office in Cook County Circuit Court. The decision to file there was a strategic one. Cook County juries were famous for giving big awards, and Corboy Demetrio Clifford had considerable clout there. The Chicago court was sure to be a better venue than Pittsburgh, where USAir was a major employer and was regarded as the hometown airline.

  Brett said his decision to sue USAir and Boeing was more about justice than about money. He wasn’t looking to get rich. He would get plenty of money from life insurance policies and workmen’s compensation for Joan. What he wanted was to get revenge against the companies he believed had killed her.

  And so Brett’s revenge became Case No. 94 L 12916, Van Bortel v. USAir Inc., the Boeing Company and Gerald E. Fox. By naming Fox, the airline’s Chicago maintenance foreman, Brett stood a better chance of keeping the case in Cook County rather than having it transferred to Pittsburgh, where many other cases were being filed. The lawsuit mentioned a host of possibilities that could have caused the crash: inadequate maintenance, the thrust reversers, the rudder system, the electrical control system. It said the airline “allowed USAir Flight 427 to crash into the ground.” In the complaints against Boeing, the suit said the 737 was “unreasonably dangerous” because its rudder system or thrust reverser did not respond properly or because it had a faulty anti-collision warning device or had an engine that fell off. The suit said Fox “carelessly and negligently failed to properly conduct the preflight maintenance and/or inspection of Flight 427.” The scattershot nature of the complaint was standard practice for trial lawyers. It was too early to know the cause of the crash, so they made a broad range of accusations. The suit said Brett “has sustained pecuniary loss and damage, including loss of society and companionship, love and affection, as a result of her death.”

  The accident record for 737s was better than those of many other jets. But the record carried a disturbing asterisk that haunted the NTSB investigators: the Colorado Springs crash. It was one of only four cases that the NTSB had never solved.

  United Airlines Flight 585 was supposed to be a twenty-minute hop from Denver to Colorad
o Springs. Skies were clear, but the Colorado Springs airport was having gusty winds.

  “Nice lookin’ day,” Captain Hal Green said to First Officer Trish Eidson as the plane taxied away from the gate. “Hard to believe the skies are unfriendly.” As they headed toward the runway, one of the pilots whistled.

  The two pilots talked about the danger of rotors, the spiraling winds that came off the mountains. Green said he knew a pilot who had flown through one. Eidson said she knew they were dangerous and that they “could tear a wing off.”

  The flight was so short that as soon as they climbed to 11,000 feet they had to begin preparations for landing. Eidson tuned to the latest weather report for Colorado Springs, which said the airport had a low-level wind shear advisory with winds gusting to 40 knots. An air traffic controller gave her directions to descend and turned them toward the airport.

  “Cleared to land,” the controller said. “Wind three-two-zero at one-six, gust two-niner.”

  “Okay, we’re cleared to land three-five, United 585,” Eidson replied. “Getting any reports lately of loss or gain of airspeed?” She wanted to know if planes were encountering trouble because of the turbulence.

  “The last air carrier was the one that reported that, a 737,” the tower said.

  “Could you repeat it please?”

  “Yes, ma’am, at five hundred feet, a 737–300 series reported a five… correction, a fifteen-knot loss. At four hundred feet, plus fifteen knots and at one hundred fifty feet, plus twenty knots.”