Atlanta Daily World

Air Crashes Not Always Due To Reported 'Pilot Error' 77

WASHINGTON- The latest airliner to crash, attempting an instrument approach landing at Chicago's Midway airport, killed 22 persons and injured 21. That happened on July 17th.

The official account sounded good, from the weather office's viewpoint and mentioned a half-mile visibility.

But this is the catch in instrument approach landings. A passenger said he was trying to take a picture and didn't see the ground until he saw the filling station. The plane hit the station and crashed only a few feet further on, into the ground.

The record books will score this accident as a 'pilot error' accident. The pilot had a half-mile visibility, the records show. The official account will tell where the pilot erred and will show why the plane should not have crashed. But have you ever noticed that fog and bad weather cause most of the crashes?

It is in this bad weather that the pilots err. And don't let anyone tell you these accidents are due to pilot error. And don't let anyone tell pen. A sudden updraft or downdraft can throw a wing into a sign, as happened to the plane mentioned above on July 17th. Whether it was a wind shift or not, in the July 17th accident, we cannot say. But the big plane's wing hit an electric sign at the filling station, just off the end of the runway, tore off when it struck the ground and the rest of the ship skidded down the runway.

It flipped on its back and killed pilot, stewardess and twenty passengers.

We were reading an American Airlines captain's account of a near-accident he experienced recently at Midway. He said two planes, waiting by the runway he was to land on, were lined up so their prop wash blew down the runway, in the direction he was landing. When he came in over the end, the wind, on which he was floating, dropped suddenly by some thirty miles an hour.

He had to get on the ground fast to keep from falling out and just made it. This is a little incident that would have gone into the records as pilot error, had an accident occurred. And the captain's widow would have been sent a dozen roses.

Yet this danger is overlooked, generally and is another small improbability that sometimes happens in the air.

Instrument landings are perfect, theoretically. But when you hit a sudden downdraft or other unexpected turbulence, the pilot is strictly on his own to get down.

If he doesn't make it, it is usually because conditions were so bad the risk was greater than usual, and something unexpected happened.

And despite what they say, most accidents involving instrument approaches are due to the small margin of error allowed, almost no margin, for a few seconds when the aircraft approaches the ground.

Pilots are human. They do not always make a perfect approach, even with instruments. And the weather is still mysterious in many ways.

That is why there are a number of fatal accidents in 'instrument' weather.