U.S. grounds 30 faulty DC10s

Press, 2 June 1979, Page 9

U.S. grounds 30 faulty DC10s

NZPA-Reuter

Washington

Nearly a quarter of the United States-registered DCIO airliner fleet have been grounded after defects were found in the pylons holding two of the plane’s three jet engines to the wings.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered rigorous checks after an American Airlines DC 10 crash in Chicago eight days ago in which 274 people ■died. The plane plunged to earth after losing a wing engine shortly after take off.

And a member of the American National Transportation Safety Board has said he will not fly on a DCIO until troubling questions have been answered and that he would be strongly tempted to ground -all the big jets if it were up to him. Asked whether he would use the wide-bodied jet, Philip Hogue replied no. *Tm not afraid, I don t wish other people to be afraid, but until the questions have been answered that I have raised here, I would have some reluctance to do so,” he said.

The five-member board is charged with investigating accidents and making recommendations to regulatory agencies, but it does not have the power to ground planes. That is the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Agency.

The F.A.A. said yesterday that 103 of the wide-bodied McDonnell Douglas jets had been scrutinised, and 31 of these required repairs before they would be allowed to fly again. The seriousness of the defects has not been determined. There are 134 DClOs in service with various American airlines, and foreign airlines fly 140 of the aircraft. So far in world-wide checks, broken and missing rivets have been revealed in two Japan Air Lines aircraft as well as metal corrosion in the pylon of a United States Continental Airlines DCIO. There was also a defect in the supporting brace of an engine on a United Airlines jet. In Chicago, investigators looking into the cause of the crash, the worst in United States aviation history, said they now believed the broken engine bolt found near the wreckage had

snapped as a result of the crash.

Earlier they said they thought the bolt had snapped because of structural weakness, before the plane careered to earth, narrowly missing a mobilehome park.

Meanwhile relatives of the crash victims were beginning to file law suits. One woman, Jane Shatkin, is suing the manufacturers and American Airlines for SIOOOM for the death of a relative. The suit alleges dangerous deficiencies in the engine mounting structures. An Austrian woman is suing McDonnell Douglas, American Airlines, and General Electric, who built the three engines, for SUSIS.7SM for the loss of her husband.

The investigators said they had found evidence that a metal engine pylon, might have struck the doomed jet’s left wing and severed the hydraulic lines. The investigators said this would have caused the crew to lose control of the jet They said it would be virtually impossible for the crew to work the controls manually to complete a successful take-off if the hydraulic system in the left wing was knocked out. Meanwhile, McDonnell Douglas said it had sold five of the DCIO jets to Brazil’s V a r i g Airlines for SUS27OM, the first sale since the crash. Nine of the airlines Which have DClOs on order have so far cancelled. The United States Airline Passenger Association, which has 50,000 members, called for the grounding of all DClOs until the cause of the Chicago crash is determined.

The association said it was advising its members not to fly on the plane. The DCIO has come under attack from various private and investigatory groups over the years, and Ralph Nader, the United States consumer advocate, has called for a Congressional investigation into the plane’s safety. In 1974 a Turkish Airlines

DCIO crashed in a wood shortly after take-off from Paris, killing 346 people. A faulty cargo door which flew open in flight and led to disruption of the main flying control cables was blamed. At the time it was revealed that an American Airlines DCIO had made an emergency landing in Canada in 1972 after suffering damage because of a faulty cargo hatch. In 1973 a man was sucked out of a window to his death from a DCIO over New Mexico, when an engine exploded and ripped open part of the fuselage. A Turkish Airlines DCIO lost part of its wing flap during a flight to Duesseldorf, West Germany, in 1975. None of the 182 passengers and crew was hurt, and the plane landed safely minus a 10kg section of wing flap. In at least two instances, jetliners have managed to land safely after one of their wing-mounted engines fell off.

But both accidents involved Boeing 7075, which have four pylon-mounted wing engines, unlike the bigger DCIO that has only one big engine on each wing and a third engine on its tail. After the crash eight days ago the Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was not certified to fly without a whole engine assembly.

But two 707 s did survive after dropping wing engines. In the first instance, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 707 took off on June 28, 1965, from San Francisco International Airport on a flight to Hawaii and Manila.

As the craft neared 213 m the right outboard wing engine dropped off, landing in an industrialised area. A 12m section of wing landed near a south San Francisco home. The pilot made an emergency landing with no injuries to the 153 passengers and crew. Witnesses later said they saw the engine wobble before it fell off. Investigators determined the third-stage exhaust turbine had failed.