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Aviation History
1996
1996 - 1762.PDF
J" J ^"i jr \ J^||f fv C ^P ATR 72 report drives a wedge into bilateral certification RAMON LOPEZ/WASHINGTON DC DAVID LEARMOUNT/LONDON THETRANSATLANTIC bi lateral aircraft-certification process has been thrown into tur moil following accusations by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) thatthe French avi ation authority and die ATR con sortium were to blame for an ATR 72 crash in the USA in 1994 which killed 68 people. The US Federal Aviation Administration also con tributed to the accident, it says. In a report on the accident of the Simmons/American Eagle ATR 72 at Roselawn, Indiana, on 31 October, 1994, the NTSB accuses die French Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC), the air craft's lead certificating audiority of ".. .failure to ensure die continued airworthiness" of die ATR series, and of "...failure to provide die FAA with timely airworthiness NEWS IN BRIEF • TAIWAN OFFER Bell is offering Taiwan's Aero Industry Development Cen tre licence-assembly of the TH-67 training helicopter is an effort to win a local military order for 30 machines. Bell president Lloyd Shoppa has met Taiwan's Committee for Aviation and Space Industry Development to discuss the proposal. • LITTON VICTORY Litton's victory in its laser- gyro patent-infringement lawsuit against Honeywell has been upheld, but Hon eywell will get a new trial to determine damages, now set at $ 1.2 billion. A jury decided in 1993 that Honeywell had infringed Litton's patent for the coating of mirrors used in ring-laser gyros. Post-Roselavm icing tests have yielded information useful to all manufacturers information developed from previ ous ATR incidents" as required under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules. The report absolves the pilots, saying that ATR (now expanded into Aero International (Regional) with British Aerospace) did not tell operators diat the aircraft was sus ceptible to violent rolls in certain extreme icing conditions. Contributory factors, says the report, were the FAAs poor over sight of operational requirements for flight into icing conditions, and of the aircraft's history in service. NTSB chairman Jim Hall says that the 22-month investigation points to "a larger problem" in the flow of safety information between the world's aviation authorities. Overall, the report has revealed a cavernous divide between the US and French interpretations of the accident causes and of events which the NTSB says presaged the crash. The French Government and the aircraft manufacturer say that the report is flawed, and the FAA has been quick to defend die bilat eral aircraft-certification process. The NTSB concludes that die probable cause of the accident was loss of control caused by a sudden aileron hinge-moment reversal which occurred after a ridge of ice accreted aft of the wing leading- edge de-icing boots. It alleges that ATR "...failed to completely dis close" to operators, and to incorpo rate in ATR 72 operating manuals, "adequate information concerning previously known effects of freez ing precipitation" on the aircraft. After the Roselawn accident, US operators of ATR 42 s and 72s were required to install larger wing de- icing boots to counter icing condi tions the severity of which was not, at die time of the accident, covered by any certification requirement. Hall insists, however, that the flight-deck crew did not have infor mation "... that other individuals in die system had in regard to possible aircraft performance problems... This raises issues of how aircraft airworthiness is monitored after initial certification. There were deficiencies regarding the ATR 72." He says that the final report addresses "...the larger problem regarding expedited flow of safety information between where an air craft is operated and the country of manufacture." John O'Brian, of the Air Line Pilots Association, agrees, saying that"... this investigation shows the need to collect and analyse data and make sure it is disseminated prop erly". He adds: "It is clear that ATR and the certification authorities had information on problems in certain icing conditions, but shared it to only a certain degree". The Bureau Enquetes-Ac- cidents (BEA), the French accident investigating authority, says that the final report "...is incomplete, inaccurate and unbalanced", insist ing diat even the report's probable- cause finding is "erroneous". Itsays that die accident was caused by the crew, who were "...so oblivious to the icing conditions they encoun tered that they ignored die multi ple warnings, instructions and regulations they already had received regarding proper opera tions in such conditions". The BEA disagrees with the NTSB point-by-point, citing Simmons Airlines' own ATR 72 operating manuals as evidence that the NTSB is wrong in its con tention that crews were not provid ed with information about the kind of aircraft behaviour they could expect in extreme icing conditions. The most penetrating BEA accusation, however, is that the NTSB did not study the Roselawn accident closely, relying for its con clusions upon three former icing incidents in the USA and two over seas. The BEA puts a different tech nical interpretation upon each of these cases, and observes that the NTSB, although fully involved in the investigation of one of the US cases (atMosinee, Wisconsin), had no recommendations to make at the time. Criticising the bilateral process, the NTSB report observes: "The FAAi ability to monitor the contin ued airworthiness of the ATR air craft was hampered by inadequately defined lines of communication. Such excessive reliance on a foreign airworthiness authority may result in the certification of a foreign- manufactured aircraft without suf ficient oversight and is not in the best interests of safety." • 6 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 17 - 23 July 1996
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