U.S. board amends findings on Pan Am crash at Pago Pago

Press, 19 October 1977, Page 9

U.S. board amends findings on Pan Am crash at Pago Pago

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

The United States National Transportation Safety Board has amended its findings on the crash of a Pan American World Airways Boeing 707 jet airliner at Pago Pago, American Samoa, on January 20, 1974. The passenger jet, on a flight from Auckland to San Francisco, hit the ground 1200 metres short of the runway and burst into flames.

Only four of the 101 people aboard survived. Seventeen New Zealanders were among the dead. The board said it agreed with the Air Line Pilots’ Association that wind shear had been encountered by the jet as it approached Pago Pago for a night landing.

In its previous report the board did not cite wind shear — a change in wind velocity and/or direction — as a cause of the accident. The board has now declared that because of the nature of the wind shear it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for the pilot to fly a stabilised approach.

However, the board disagreed with the pilots that the accident had been inevitable once wind shear had been encountered. “The evidence still supported as a probable cause the flight crew’s apparent lack of recognition and obvious lack of action when their rate of descent reached nearly twice the normal rate.”

The board said this had resulted from a breakdown in flight-crew co-ordination and failure to adhere to prescribed call-out procedures after the initial phase of the approach. A.L.P.A. petitioned the board for a reconsideration of its findings of cause in May, last year.

The board said in its new report that because of technical advances made after the Pago Pago investigation, it could detect and measure the wind-shear effect on the jet.

“The accident could have been avoided had the crew recognised the onset of the high descent rate, and taken timely action,” the board’s report said. An A.L.P.A. spokesman said yesterday that the

pilots were disappointed with the latest report. “It’s an improvement, but the whole thing still is dismissed as pilot error,” he said.

The board’s report will have no influence on the pending trial in Los Angeles of damages claims against Pan American, Boeing, and the United States Government lodged by survivors and families of the victims of the Pago Pago crash. The board’s findings on accidents cannot be used in civil claims.

Jury selection in the damages action is expected to begin on October 25. According to Los Angeles sources, disagreement among the defendants has so far prevented any out-of-court settlement.