Photoflight
AIR rAMBO
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2005
- Posts
- 541
found this on jetcareers.com.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/14998705.htm
SHADY SHORES, Texas - At 24, Nicholas Hibberd was teaching others to fly, and with the hours he logged ferrying freight, this pilot's son was chasing his own dream of passenger flight.
He did not know it, but his cargo plane was terribly flawed that December morning. A week before, the attitude indicator, which shows the plane's position along the horizon, had gone haywire, aborting a flight. For days before Hibberd's cargo run, crews reinstalled and checked it.
Similar problems could have grounded a passenger jet filled with people. But in small cargo operations, mechanical failings can persist, and some planes fly that should not because of maintenance problems and lax oversight.
In overcast skies 34 minutes before sunrise, Hibberd's Cessna 402C went out of control.
"The attitude indicator is, ah, is ah, not helping me out too much, so I may need a little bit of help," Hibberd radioed to air traffic controllers. "It's very hard to fly."
Losing the instrument in such conditions, experts say, is like driving in a pitch-black tunnel with no headlights.
The plane crashed, killing Hibberd and spraying debris upon a home in rural Shady Shores, 30 miles northwest of Dallas, narrowly missing the couple inside.
His 2002 death, marked with a white cross and wreath that straddle the side of the road, is one tragic snapshot in an industry tainted with many.
A deadly job
From Texas to Alaska to Colorado and beyond, cargo pilots are dying in large numbers. Yet, beyond loved ones left behind, few are paying attention, and the Federal Aviation Administration -- the industry's watchdog -- has ignored specific pleas to upgrade safety for a highly competitive business plagued by a culture of cut corners, loose oversight and risky flying, a Miami Herald investigation has found.The FAA said that its regulations provide a high level of safety and that the primary responsibility for compliance with regulations and safe operations lies with the air carriers.
The newspaper analyzed National Transportation Safety Board reports on every fatal U.S. cargo crash since 2000, along with FAA inspection and enforcement files, internal company memos, safety studies, lawsuits and industry reports. Those records, coupled with interviews with aviation experts, former government regulators and cargo pilots, reveal systemic safety breakdowns in this oft-ignored industry:
• Since 2000, there have been 69 fatal cargo plane crashes in the United States, an average of nearly one a month, killing 85 and making air cargo the nation's deadliest form of commercial aviation.
• Cargo planes operate under less stringent safety rules than passenger planes, and cargo pilots are allowed to fly up to 40 percent more hours a year. Yet they work in a pressure-cooker environment to deliver goods on time, often flying in icy, hazardous weather.
One pilot, so tired that he had previously fallen asleep at the controls, begged for someone to join him on a flight in June 2005. No help came. That morning, the 27-year-old died when his plane crashed into a Colorado mountain.
His Utah cargo company had been fined seven times in five years for a string of safety violations, yet it continued to fly and failed to pay most of the fines. The FAA revoked its license, but only after the deadly 2005 crash.
• In nearly a quarter of fatal crashes, mechanical problems had not been fixed before cargo pilots took off, a safety breakdown that would be unacceptable in passenger planes.
• The FAA allows cargo companies to continue to operate despite blatant maintenance lapses and histories of crashes.
• Two turboprops that are among the most popular in the industry, the Cessna 208B and Mitsubishi MU-2, account for one-fourth of all fatal crashes.
The FAA twice denied requests from Mitsubishi to boost pilot-training programs, only to see the MU-2 involved in repeated crashes. The Cessna continues to fly despite urgent concerns, spelled out in the government's own memos, about the plane's handling in icing conditions.
Cracks in the system
Despite these problems, the FAA and major industry groups have not heeded pleas to set a standard level of safety, even as the government's own dwindling inspection force often leaves companies to monitor themselves.
The FAA, the federal agency charged with keeping the skies safe, has failed to address the industry's most serious problems. Time and again, the FAA has been chided by safety advocates and government regulators for not aggressively monitoring air cargo.
Pilots and safety advocates say the industry receives less attention because of a striking numbers game: When a cargo plane falls, the body count is typically one: the pilot, often flying for an obscure company.
"The FAA is spread very thin, and they're concerned more with passenger operations than with freight," said Jonathon Ford, a veteran cargo pilot. "If a freight plane goes down, you are only going to lose a pilot, and if a passenger plane goes down, you are going to lose a lot of people."
Yet the industry's safety implications extend beyond single pilots. More than a dozen times since 2000, cargo planes have crashed on residential streets, in driveways, on golf courses, in a lake near high-rise condos, or near shopping centers and construction sites -- in some cases, just missing clusters of people.
The planes' bellies are filled with potential hazards. They crisscross the country ferrying explosives, poisons, oxidizers, corrosives, flammable liquids, gases, batteries, aerosols, nitric acid and sulfuric acid, FAA records show.
The pilots who fly these planes often do so for scant pay. In their profession, small cargo pilots are at the bottom tier.
Yet their work is a driving force of U.S. commerce, with cargo pilots transporting bank records, medical supplies, factory parts, holiday gifts, business letters and scores of other products. It's not just big industry that drives air cargo, but individual consumers who order goods shipped overnight with the tap of a keyboard.
In the U.S., air express accounts for more than 70 percent of air cargo shipments, researchers at UNC Chapel Hill found. Revenue for U.S. air and express freight was nearly $30 billion in 2004, a record, the Seattle-based aviation consultant Air Cargo Management Group found.
An aged fleet
Cargo planes have a strike against them even before they take off. Many are old -- nearly 26 years old, on average, for the fallen planes, more than three times the age of typical airline passenger aircraft, records show.Older planes have fewer modern safety features, and they are sometimes plagued by deteriorating engines or breakdowns in crucial flight instruments, a combination that helps trigger cargo's high number of crashes.
"These guys are remote, they are flying at 2 or 3 in the morning. You think an FAA inspector is going to go out and bird-dog somebody like that? Flying out of little, crappy airports?" said former FAA inspector Bart Crotty.
"The FAA is going to spend their oversight dollars ... on the commercial operators that are flying passengers."
The `dogs' of the industry
To this day, the FAA has not conducted its own study of air cargo's crash rate.
FAA Administrator Marion Blakey declined to be interviewed.
"While a formal study ... has not been done, the FAA is aware of the higher accident rate in this type of operation," the agency wrote in reply to written questions to Blakey.
The FAA said it has established a new organization, the Commuter, On Demand and Training Center Branch, to explore safety issues involving that family of aircraft.
While insisting that its regulations "provide an extremely high level of safety," the FAA said "the primary responsibility for compliance with regulations and safe operations lies WITH THE AIR CARRIER."
Critics say that approach is part of the problem.
Leaving control largely in the hands of an industry known for its tight deadlines and tighter profits invites problems. Air cargo pilots, by nature, are exposed to greater risks than those encountered by other pilots.
"We're definitely considered the dogs of the flying industry. We fly older airplanes in crappy weather, in small airports," said pilot Ford.
To meet deadlines, cargo planes fly at night, making flying more difficult.
Experts say many cargo pilots, particularly those flying for smaller companies, get paid only when the goods arrive. The way to move up the aviation industry ladder to better-paying jobs: logging hours in the air.
"If you don't get it there, you don't get paid. It's a tough business," said Robert Breiling, whose Boca Raton, Fla., company compiles industry crash figures. "They are pushing their airplanes because they are trying to make a buck."
A year before Hibberd's crash in 2002, another company plane crashed, killing the pilot. Maintenance failure caused the 1978 Cessna to fall.
FAA inspections later found serious lapses at Tex Star Air Freight, which frequently ferried film, documenting several unairworthy aircraft and finding that the company's maintenance director "did not demonstrate the competency and knowledge" to hold the post. In 2005, facing more civil fines after its second fatal crash, the company surrendered its operating certificate.
Reached in Texas, Tex Star Air Freight President Mark Huff said his company did everything it could "without a doubt" to keep its planes safe.
"It's very unfortunate it happened to my company within an 18-month time frame, but you are playing with fire every day to a certain degree," Huff said. "The only way to avoid it in this industry is to not be in it." -- McClatchy correspondent Jason Grotto contributed.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/14998705.htm
SHADY SHORES, Texas - At 24, Nicholas Hibberd was teaching others to fly, and with the hours he logged ferrying freight, this pilot's son was chasing his own dream of passenger flight.
He did not know it, but his cargo plane was terribly flawed that December morning. A week before, the attitude indicator, which shows the plane's position along the horizon, had gone haywire, aborting a flight. For days before Hibberd's cargo run, crews reinstalled and checked it.
Similar problems could have grounded a passenger jet filled with people. But in small cargo operations, mechanical failings can persist, and some planes fly that should not because of maintenance problems and lax oversight.
In overcast skies 34 minutes before sunrise, Hibberd's Cessna 402C went out of control.
"The attitude indicator is, ah, is ah, not helping me out too much, so I may need a little bit of help," Hibberd radioed to air traffic controllers. "It's very hard to fly."
Losing the instrument in such conditions, experts say, is like driving in a pitch-black tunnel with no headlights.
The plane crashed, killing Hibberd and spraying debris upon a home in rural Shady Shores, 30 miles northwest of Dallas, narrowly missing the couple inside.
His 2002 death, marked with a white cross and wreath that straddle the side of the road, is one tragic snapshot in an industry tainted with many.
A deadly job
From Texas to Alaska to Colorado and beyond, cargo pilots are dying in large numbers. Yet, beyond loved ones left behind, few are paying attention, and the Federal Aviation Administration -- the industry's watchdog -- has ignored specific pleas to upgrade safety for a highly competitive business plagued by a culture of cut corners, loose oversight and risky flying, a Miami Herald investigation has found.The FAA said that its regulations provide a high level of safety and that the primary responsibility for compliance with regulations and safe operations lies with the air carriers.
The newspaper analyzed National Transportation Safety Board reports on every fatal U.S. cargo crash since 2000, along with FAA inspection and enforcement files, internal company memos, safety studies, lawsuits and industry reports. Those records, coupled with interviews with aviation experts, former government regulators and cargo pilots, reveal systemic safety breakdowns in this oft-ignored industry:
• Since 2000, there have been 69 fatal cargo plane crashes in the United States, an average of nearly one a month, killing 85 and making air cargo the nation's deadliest form of commercial aviation.
• Cargo planes operate under less stringent safety rules than passenger planes, and cargo pilots are allowed to fly up to 40 percent more hours a year. Yet they work in a pressure-cooker environment to deliver goods on time, often flying in icy, hazardous weather.
One pilot, so tired that he had previously fallen asleep at the controls, begged for someone to join him on a flight in June 2005. No help came. That morning, the 27-year-old died when his plane crashed into a Colorado mountain.
His Utah cargo company had been fined seven times in five years for a string of safety violations, yet it continued to fly and failed to pay most of the fines. The FAA revoked its license, but only after the deadly 2005 crash.
• In nearly a quarter of fatal crashes, mechanical problems had not been fixed before cargo pilots took off, a safety breakdown that would be unacceptable in passenger planes.
• The FAA allows cargo companies to continue to operate despite blatant maintenance lapses and histories of crashes.
• Two turboprops that are among the most popular in the industry, the Cessna 208B and Mitsubishi MU-2, account for one-fourth of all fatal crashes.
The FAA twice denied requests from Mitsubishi to boost pilot-training programs, only to see the MU-2 involved in repeated crashes. The Cessna continues to fly despite urgent concerns, spelled out in the government's own memos, about the plane's handling in icing conditions.
Cracks in the system
Despite these problems, the FAA and major industry groups have not heeded pleas to set a standard level of safety, even as the government's own dwindling inspection force often leaves companies to monitor themselves.
The FAA, the federal agency charged with keeping the skies safe, has failed to address the industry's most serious problems. Time and again, the FAA has been chided by safety advocates and government regulators for not aggressively monitoring air cargo.
Pilots and safety advocates say the industry receives less attention because of a striking numbers game: When a cargo plane falls, the body count is typically one: the pilot, often flying for an obscure company.
"The FAA is spread very thin, and they're concerned more with passenger operations than with freight," said Jonathon Ford, a veteran cargo pilot. "If a freight plane goes down, you are only going to lose a pilot, and if a passenger plane goes down, you are going to lose a lot of people."
Yet the industry's safety implications extend beyond single pilots. More than a dozen times since 2000, cargo planes have crashed on residential streets, in driveways, on golf courses, in a lake near high-rise condos, or near shopping centers and construction sites -- in some cases, just missing clusters of people.
The planes' bellies are filled with potential hazards. They crisscross the country ferrying explosives, poisons, oxidizers, corrosives, flammable liquids, gases, batteries, aerosols, nitric acid and sulfuric acid, FAA records show.
The pilots who fly these planes often do so for scant pay. In their profession, small cargo pilots are at the bottom tier.
Yet their work is a driving force of U.S. commerce, with cargo pilots transporting bank records, medical supplies, factory parts, holiday gifts, business letters and scores of other products. It's not just big industry that drives air cargo, but individual consumers who order goods shipped overnight with the tap of a keyboard.
In the U.S., air express accounts for more than 70 percent of air cargo shipments, researchers at UNC Chapel Hill found. Revenue for U.S. air and express freight was nearly $30 billion in 2004, a record, the Seattle-based aviation consultant Air Cargo Management Group found.
An aged fleet
Cargo planes have a strike against them even before they take off. Many are old -- nearly 26 years old, on average, for the fallen planes, more than three times the age of typical airline passenger aircraft, records show.Older planes have fewer modern safety features, and they are sometimes plagued by deteriorating engines or breakdowns in crucial flight instruments, a combination that helps trigger cargo's high number of crashes.
"These guys are remote, they are flying at 2 or 3 in the morning. You think an FAA inspector is going to go out and bird-dog somebody like that? Flying out of little, crappy airports?" said former FAA inspector Bart Crotty.
"The FAA is going to spend their oversight dollars ... on the commercial operators that are flying passengers."
The `dogs' of the industry
To this day, the FAA has not conducted its own study of air cargo's crash rate.
FAA Administrator Marion Blakey declined to be interviewed.
"While a formal study ... has not been done, the FAA is aware of the higher accident rate in this type of operation," the agency wrote in reply to written questions to Blakey.
The FAA said it has established a new organization, the Commuter, On Demand and Training Center Branch, to explore safety issues involving that family of aircraft.
While insisting that its regulations "provide an extremely high level of safety," the FAA said "the primary responsibility for compliance with regulations and safe operations lies WITH THE AIR CARRIER."
Critics say that approach is part of the problem.
Leaving control largely in the hands of an industry known for its tight deadlines and tighter profits invites problems. Air cargo pilots, by nature, are exposed to greater risks than those encountered by other pilots.
"We're definitely considered the dogs of the flying industry. We fly older airplanes in crappy weather, in small airports," said pilot Ford.
To meet deadlines, cargo planes fly at night, making flying more difficult.
Experts say many cargo pilots, particularly those flying for smaller companies, get paid only when the goods arrive. The way to move up the aviation industry ladder to better-paying jobs: logging hours in the air.
"If you don't get it there, you don't get paid. It's a tough business," said Robert Breiling, whose Boca Raton, Fla., company compiles industry crash figures. "They are pushing their airplanes because they are trying to make a buck."
A year before Hibberd's crash in 2002, another company plane crashed, killing the pilot. Maintenance failure caused the 1978 Cessna to fall.
FAA inspections later found serious lapses at Tex Star Air Freight, which frequently ferried film, documenting several unairworthy aircraft and finding that the company's maintenance director "did not demonstrate the competency and knowledge" to hold the post. In 2005, facing more civil fines after its second fatal crash, the company surrendered its operating certificate.
Reached in Texas, Tex Star Air Freight President Mark Huff said his company did everything it could "without a doubt" to keep its planes safe.
"It's very unfortunate it happened to my company within an 18-month time frame, but you are playing with fire every day to a certain degree," Huff said. "The only way to avoid it in this industry is to not be in it." -- McClatchy correspondent Jason Grotto contributed.
