Cargo doors a problem—airline

Press, 27 April 1989, Page 2

Cargo doors a problem —airline

NZPA-Reuter Seattle A Pan Am engineer said yesterday that after a Boeing 747 cargo door partly opened in flight in 1987 the airline found that about one-fourth of the 747 cargo doors it tested could come unlatched after being locked. The testimony by a Pan American Airlines’ master engineer, Robert Dann, came on the first day of a public hearing conducted by the United States National Transportation Safety Board to investigate a tragedy two months ago on a United Airlines flight near Hawaii. That accident, in which nine passengers were sucked through a hole in the fuselage after a cargo door blew off, occurred about 135 km south of Honolulu as the plane headed for New Zealand. The plane, with a crew of 18 and 337 remaining passengers, returned safely to Honolulu.

Mr Dann said a cargo door opened on a Pan Am plane on March 10, 1987, after it took off from London. It was the first time a 747 cargo door had come open in flight, he said.

“It raised all kinds of red flags in New York,” he said, referring to the airline’s corporate headquarters and a subsequent investigation.

Pan Am found that in 80 of 350 latch systems tested, the door “could come unlatched even though it was locked” if certain lock pieces were damaged or broken by unforeseen stress, Mr Dann said.

Testimony from the hearing, expected to end today, will be submitted to the full N.T.5.8., which is not expected to make an official ruling on the cause of the Hawaii incident until late this year.