Disasters Never a Year So Bad

By Jill Smolowe

Again, passengers boarded a jetliner, strapped themselves in and prepared to set course for a holiday resort. Once again, the seat configuration had been modified to hold more passengers. Almost every seat was taken. Beyond a few slender details, the tragedies of British Airtours Flight KT 328 and Japan Air Lines Flight 123 have little in common. But last week's air disaster at Manchester International Airport, in the north of England, coming just ten days after the crash of the JAL jumbo jet, had a numbingly familiar ring: the reports of panicked passengers screaming for help, a plane with a sound safety record lying twisted and charred. The grim toll of the dead, this time, was 54. Miraculously, 83 survived the blaze that engulfed the Boeing 737 shortly after an engine exploded during takeoff, forcing the plane back onto the runway.

The tragedy was the fourth major air disaster in the past ten weeks, and the third involving a Boeing aircraft. No pattern has emerged, however, that suggests any linkage between the various accidents. Preliminary reports on the Manchester wreck cited an "uncontained engine failure," meaning an explosion in the plane's engine, which was built for Boeing by Pratt & Whitney of East Hartford, Conn. In the case of Air India Flight 182, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the Irish coast on June 23, killing all 329 aboard, a bomb is suspected of having caused the 747 to disintegrate in midair. The JAL crash on Aug. 12, which claimed 520 lives, is still under investigation, but speculation continues that the rear pressure bulkhead cracked in flight.

While the precise cause of each of these disasters may never be conclusively established, there is one certainty: 1985 is already the worst year in civil- aviation history, and there are still four months to go. The year has seen 15 air accidents worldwide and a death toll estimated at more than 1,500, surpassing the previous record, set in all of 1974, by at least 245 deaths. The bleak performance has ruffled even the most intrepid flyers, and now is raising disturbing issues about flight overcrowding and inattention to safety that could give airlines a bumpy ride in the months ahead. "The 'driver' is economics, not safety," Charles Miller, a former safety inspector for the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, charged last week.

The tragedy of Flight KT 328 began shortly after 7:00 a.m. London time. As the 131 passengers settled back in their seats, many were probably thinking of their pending escape from England's blustery summer for the sunny Greek island of Corfu, the plane's destination. At 7:07, the twin-engine jet pulled away from the loading gate and taxied to the northeast end of runway 2406.

In the cockpit, Captain Peter Terrington, 39, a 19-year veteran of flying, received the all-clear signal from the control tower. As the plane hit 120 m.p.h., about one-third of the way down the 10,000-ft. runway, the left engine exploded. The blast ruptured fuel tanks and lines, spewing jet fuel throughout the rear passenger section of the plane and turning it into an inferno.

Terrington's first warning of the impending disaster came when an emergency warning light and a buzzer went off, signaling trouble in the plane's left engine. At about the same moment, an explosion resounded throughout the airport. "It was like a dull thud," said Neal Andrews, 38, a cab-driver who was waiting in the airport's taxi line. "I thought it was a tire blowing out," Sharon Jessop, 18, a student from Manchester, recalled nine hours after her harrowing escape from the wreckage.

Terrington shut down both engines and slammed on the brakes. The jet, trailing a stream of smoke, fishtailed to a halt two-thirds of the way down the runway on a taxiway, just 200 yds. from the fire station. By the time the call from the emergency control tower came in at 7:13 a.m., firemen were loading into five fire-fighting vehicles equipped with foam. They reached the burning craft within 30 sec.

Inside the plane, passengers in the front section were still unaware of the gravity of their situation. Student Jessop, looking out of a window, saw "an orange glow" and thought it was the sun. A moment later, Terrington instructed passengers to remain in their seats. But before the pilot, co-pilot and four flight attendants could begin to evacuate the plane, choking smoke, billowing up from the back of the aircraft, enveloped the cabin. Passengers in the rear section are believed to have been overcome immediately by smoke and the toxic fumes that result when polyurethane seat coverings, acrylic carpeting and plastic foam in the seats catch fire. Unlike the lucky few passengers on the JAL flight, for whom rear seats proved a lifesaver, passengers seated in the back of Flight KT 328 never had the slimmest chance of escape.

In the front of the cabin, pandemonium erupted. "One minute I was picking up my bag, getting ready to go," Jessop remembered. "The next minute I could not see my hand in front of my face, and I was screaming for my life." Terrified passengers piled into the aisles and began clawing their way toward the plane's exits. When people discovered that the door over the left wing was blocked by flames, the chaos grew. "People were just on top of each other trying to get out," Mike Mather, 21, of Norwich, said.

Meanwhile, Harold Jones, the senior fire officer in charge of the 19-member fire-fighting crew, was trying desperately to clear the area. "I kept yelling 'Go! Get out out of the way!' " he said. Jones instructed two of his men, Brian Wilson, 38, and Ronald Beech, 51, to don safety gear and board the Boeing 737 to aid the frenetic evacuation. The firemen had just entered through the door over the right wing when the jet's rear was rattled by an explosion, perhaps caused by the ignition of the oxygen tanks that supply the plane's emergency masks. Seconds later, another blast, closer to the front, rocked the aircraft. The impact swept Wilson off his feet and backward into Beech, saving Wilson from being blown out of the plane. Like 79 of the flight's 83 survivors, he had to receive medical treatment. (Four of the flight crew members, including the pilot, escaped unharmed.) At week's end twelve remained hospitalized, only one of them in critical condition.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, several passengers complained that cramped leg space had made it difficult to escape. Most of the 1,125 Boeing 737s now used by 133 airlines worldwide on scheduled flights with first-class sections seat only 115 passengers. But the first-class section in this four-year-old jet had been removed to accommodate 15 more.

As yet, there are no firm answers as to why the Boeing 737's left underwing engine exploded. Initial suspicions centered on the possibility that a piece of the turbine may have dislodged from the jet's JT8D-15 engine, rupturing fuel tanks. Later, investigators dismissed turbine failure as a probable cause, suggesting instead that the problem may have stemmed from the combustion chambers that surround the center of the engine.

Either way, all eyes were on Pratt & Whitney, the division of United Technologies Corp. that manufactures the engine. The company's JT8D engines have had a series of malfunctions. Last October, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued a directive to JT8D operators around the world to check turbine parts, an order that was passed on to all carriers in the United Kingdom. Eight months later, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board contacted the FAA, citing several turbine disk failures over the past four years aboard JT8D-powered planes and again called for the engines to be inspected. The FAA asked Pratt & Whitney to conduct preliminary tests and draw up an inspection program, which the company has done.

The conclusions of a Pratt & Whitney survey of maintenance reports concerning JT8D engines, ordered last week by the FAA, are expected to be announced this week. Pratt & Whitney officials issued a statement last week warning aircraft operators to inspect all such engines, particularly the combustion chambers. At the same time, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who flew home from vacation in Austria and immediately visited the disaster site, ordered a "rigorous inquiry" into the explosion. Government investigators are predicting that the probe could take up to 18 months.

Meanwhile, in Japan, investigators continued probing the crash of JAL's doomed Flight 123 and searching for many still missing bodies. Bereaved families of six of the victims received some small comfort last week: notes penned by loved ones just moments before the plane went down. "Machiko, take care of the kids," Masakatsu Taniguchi wrote to his wife. From Keiichi Matsumoto, there were three words for his two-year-old son: "Tetsuya, become respectable." Former JAL Employee Mariko Shirai, 26, could only scribble: "Scared, scared, scared, help, feel sick, don't want to die." Kazuo Yoshimura offered his wife the simple encouragement "Hang in there." And from Hirotsugu Kawaguchi, there was a 17-sentence letter to his three children that was alternately wistful, sad, instructive and finally philosophical: "I'm grateful for the truly happy life I have had until now." As people around the world read newspaper accounts of these brave notes and news of the Manchester disaster, many could not help wondering when the next air tragedy would strike and whether next time it might strike closer to home.

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With reporting by Jerry Hannifin/Washington and Steven Holmes/Manchester All Copies to J. Ward