Airport News, Requirement for Instrument Flying Increased

["Tim Skinner" <msgt@kokee.hawaiian.net>]

Requirements for instrument flying stepped up since
tragedy

By TIMOTHY HURLEY

Staff Writer

KAHULUI -- Who was at fault in the crash of Aloha IslandAir Flight 1712, the
worst
interisland plane crash in Hawaii history?

Pilot Bruce Pollard was assigned most of the blame in a report issued on the
crash by the
National Transportation Safety Board nearly a year after the Oct. 28, 1989,
incident.

According to the report, Pollard probably made the fatal error when he
continued flying under
visual-flight rules at night when stormy conditions demanded the use of
instruments.

A navigational error led Pollard to misjudge his actual position at the East
End of Molokai, the
NTSB concluded, and contrary to regulations, he ducked below the clouds in
an attempt to
maintain visibility, a practice known by pilots as ``scud running.''

Pollard continued flying the de Davilland Twin Otter at an altitude
substantially lower than the
height of the terrain and struck a Halawa Valley hillside at 600 feet.

The crash killed 20 people, including Pollard and his co-pilot, eight
members of the Molokai
High School boys and girls volleyball teams, their coach and the school's
athletic director.

In its 1990 report, the board said the pilot's past flying record had
displayed ``a pattern of
unprofessional behavior,'' including a Federal Aviation Administration
citation and a 180-day
suspension from flying. The board found that Princeville Airways, the
predecessor to Aloha
IslandAir, failed to conduct a pre-employment check.

The report said Pollard also may have been fatigued from an ``active social
life'' and from
undergoing Boeing 737 ground-school training for Aloha IslandAir's sister
company, Aloha
Airlines. Flight 1712 was to be Pollard's last flight for Aloha IslandAir.

While Pollard received most of the blame, the airline and the FAA took some
hits too.

The safety board said Aloha IslandAir had geared its operation to
visual-flight rules, leading to
the erosion of pilot instrument skills and discouraging pilots from flying
by instruments. In fact,
Pollard may have been influenced to use visual-flight rules to save time,
according to the report.

In interviews of family members conducted by NTSB investigators, First
Officer Phil Helfrich
was reported to have said he was ``scared for his life'' because skud
running was common
practice on Aloha IslandAir flights.

Among other things, the board recommended that the airline modify its
operations to
accommodate instrument rules on all of its flights and do thorough
background checks on
potential pilots.

Spokesperson Julie King said last week that the airline has implemented all
of the safety board's
recommendations and has undergone major changes in the last 10 years
designed to increase
safety.

The air carrier, which changed its name to Island Air in 1992, is now under
a new level of FAA
certification that mandates the use of instruments on all flights. The
certification also requires
stringent training, oversight and operating rules. And, the company is using
larger planes.

The air carrier, she said, uses a ``cockpit resource management'' program
that has greatly
improved communications between the flight crew, flight attendants, ramp
personnel and flight
dispatch.

``They're constantly talking to each other, repeating and verifying
information,'' King said.

The company also has implemented quality-assurance programs that require
additional staffing
to maintain a system of checks and balances for flight safety, she said.

In the 1990 report, the FAA's Flight Standards District Office in Honolulu
was criticized for
having insufficient staffing for oversight over Aloha IslandAir during a
period of that airline's
rapid operational expansion.

Among other things, FAA inspectors were unaware of an unauthorized reduction
in
ground-school training hours by the airline, the report said.

The NTSB recommended that the FAA conduct a special study of the staffing at
the Honolulu
office to consider work hours, geographic area of responsibility and the
size and complexity of
assigned operations.

The FAA reduced the area of the office's responsibility shortly after the
Molokai crash.

Tom Rea, the FAA Pacific representative in Honolulu for the past six years,
said constraints on
the number of inspectors in his office remain a concern, though special
efforts are made to
watch over growing carrier operations.

Among the recommendations issued by the NTSB following the crash was that
the FAA
require the use of ground-proximity warning devices in planes. In 1992, the
FAA issued a rule
that requires all turbine-powered airplanes with 10 or more seats be
equipped with the device.

Another recommendation by the FAA was requiring commuter airlines to file
instrument-flight
plans during hours of darkness. In 1996, the FAA did indeed require
operations to use
instrument-flight rules in airplanes with 10 or more passenger seats.

However, smaller plans still are allowed to use visual-flight rules at
night.

Rea said a strong general-aviation lobby has worked to block efforts to
require all planes to use
instruments at night. He said in Hawaii the ``black hole'' effect, or lack
of surface lights, can
make visual-rules flying at night dangerous.

Night-flying around Cape Halawa got a smaller plane in trouble Nov. 1, 1996.
That's when
Maui County Council Member Tom Morrow was killed in a private airplane crash
along with
council candidate Alfred Deloso and Democratic Party supporters Robert
McCarthy and
Mitchell and Suzanne Katz. The private plane, piloted by McCarthy, crashed
in the same
vicinity as Flight 1712.

Following lobbying by the Maui County Council and others, the U.S. Coast
Guard installed a
navigation light at Cape Halawa this year. The light, which was activated
June 24, provides the
only visible aid to navigation for boaters and aviators traveling in the
area.

Rea said the light was installed without the support of his office. While he
said it could assist a
pilot in many circumstances, it could have the opposite effect under certain
weather situations.

If heavy clouds obscure the light, he said, a pilot might be lured into
believing he or she is farther
away from land, with disastrous results.

Rea said the light is not a solution to the hazards of nighttime visual
flying.



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