Five airtankers linked to same company lose wings in mid-flight
Saturday December 07, 2002By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO (AP) As it swooped over a burning California forest last June, the C-130A airtanker owned by Hawkins & Powers Aviation Inc. wobbled slightly. Then its wings snapped off, sending it plunging into the ground, killing its three-member crew.
The crash, caught by a television crew and broadcast worldwide, was not the first involving a Hawkins & Powers plane, and it wouldn't be the last. One month later, a company plane fighting a Colorado fire also lost a wing in mid-flight, killing its two crewmen.
Now, an Associated Press review of public records shows the Greybull, Wyo.-based company had wings snap off two other planes in 1987 and 1979. A fifth plane previously owned by the company crashed in 1994, also in a wing failure.
On Friday, the government permanently ended the firefighting use of all surviving C-130s and PB4Y-2s of the sort that crashed northwest of Denver, saying contractors could not guarantee the safety of the aircraft.
The decision came as one result of a review of the nation's entire aerial wildland firefighting program ordered after this summer's crashes. Investigators also reopened their probe of the fatal 1994 crash, which they said might have provided lessons that would have prevented this summer's C-130 crash.
The C-130s were pressed into service as a direct result of Hawkins & Powers' two earlier mid-air wing separations. The Forest Service banned the use of C-119s, known as Flying Boxcars, for firefighting in October 1987 after the second of the company's two airtankers broke apart in mid-flight over northern California, killing three crew members. The C-130 was the C-119's replacement.
Hawkins & Powers co-owner Duane Powers said the company did all it could to find the hidden cracks that downed the company's planes last summer.
``People need to know that Hawkins & Powers is one of the top safety companies that does this work around the world,'' Powers said.
Safety problems with the nation's aging aerial airtanker fleet could have a dramatic effect on firefighting, even as decades of accumulated fuel in tinder-dry forests have prompted surges in wildfires and flight hours.
Friday's groundings of 11 C-130s and PB4Y-2s eliminated a quarter of the nation's 44 airtanker fleet, and will force more reliance on helicopters and military aircraft, said aviation officials for the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
Pilots may have to stop swooping into canyons and performing other high-stress maneuvers with the remaining older aircraft, warned Associated Airtanker Pilots Chairman Robert Wofford. That could force more drops from higher altitudes a safer but less efficient tactic.
Because government contracts go to the lowest bidder, there's great financial pressure to keep costs down, said airtanker pilots and the Aerial Firefighting Industry Association. And because government contract specifications require neither the most sophisticated technology nor the most sophisticated maintenance procedures, those are areas where money can be saved.
That was echoed in Friday's report as well. The co-chairman of the special committee reviewing last summer's fatalities says airtankers working for the federal government also should be equipped with cockpit and flight data recorders, as are commercial aircraft. But no such recorders are required.
``The federal government should not have a double standard when it comes to safety,'' said Jim Hall, who coincidentally was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board during the investigation of the 1994 crash. Had those recorders been in place in 1994, it might have helped prevent this summer's C-130 crash, Hall said.
Government contracts also don't require maintenance using the most sophisticated tests that are available to check for cracking or weakened metal.
Such tests are ``a hell of a lot cheaper than having one crash on you. But if you're bidding for nickels and dimes you're going to have to have the Forest Service require it to level the playing field,'' said Walt Darran, safety committee chairman for the Associated Airtanker Pilots and the California Fire Pilots Association.
No one has accused Hawkins & Powers of failing to meet contract specs for maintenance, and Powers denied cutting any corners. He said the company exceeded federal requirements in checking for wing cracks but couldn't find cracks hidden under overlying sheets of metal.
``Routine inspection procedures were in place, but not extraordinary inspection procedures,'' he said in an interview. ``They (the cracks) were in areas that were hidden and undetectable under the procedures that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and (the Department of the) Interior required.''
During the investigation, Vice President Gene Powers, Duane Powers' father, said the military has long known of wing problems on the Lockheed Hercules C-130A, but did not pass that word to contractors who use the cargo planes to drop fire-retardant slurry on wildfires.
But an FAA document obtained by The Associated Press shows the company told the agency that the C-130A that crashed this summer was repaired in April 1998 for cracks in one wing.
Also, an NTSB report in September said ``many of the same inspection and maintenance issues seen in the most recent C-130A and P-4Y accident investigations'' were supposed to be eliminated by regulations required when C-130s were cleared for airtanker duty nearly a decade ago.
The Interior Department initially banned the C-130s for firefighting use in 1993 because of inspection and maintenance problems, but relented after the FAA developed an ``action plan'' to make sure contractors performed proper inspections and maintenance.'
Despite those improved procedures, the NTSB said it found fatigue cracks in the wings of both the Hawkins & Powers' 46-year-old C-130A that crashed near Walker, Calif., in June, and the 57-year-old PB4Y-2 airtanker that crashed near Estes Park, Colo., in July. Wings snapped off both aircraft during retardant drops.
``We've only got so many safety dollars and so many mechanic dollars,'' said Gene Powers. Though his son denied money was a consideration in inspections and maintenance, the elder Powers told Hall's panel that, ``Safety costs money. That is all there is to it. And if you deprive somebody of the proper funds, he has to start allocating his dollars.''
The Forest Service ban on use of C-119s for firefighting came after a second Hawkins & Powers' Fairchild C-119 airtanker broke apart in mid-flight over northern California, killing three crew members in September 1987.
That was eight years after two Hawkins & Powers crewmen died when a wing failed on their C-119 during a retardant drop over Southern California in June 1979. A third C-119, operated by Hemet Valley Flying Service and formerly owned by Hawkins & Powers, crashed in 1981.
As a result, Hawkins & Powers and four other contractors needed a new airtanker to replace their grounded C-119s. They got 20 military surplus C-130 Lockheed Hercules cargo planes including the airtanker that crashed in 1994 and the plane that crashed this summer.
``The new airplanes they brought in turned out to have the same sort of problems as the old airplanes,'' Duane Powers said.
On the Net:
Hawkins & Powers: http://www.hawkinsandpowers.com
National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov
Associated Airtanker Pilots www.airtanker.com
Aerial Firefighting Industry Association: http://www.afia.com
Associated Press Writer Scott Sonner contributed to this story.
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