CHAPTER THREE

SUBSEQUENT CRASHES

LAKE MICHIGAN
A United Airlines Boeing 720 crashed into Lake Michigan(5) due to the pilots' lack of altitude awareness, a problem I reported and for which I had undertaken corrective actions. FAA management had ordered me to stop the corrective actions. During the grievance hearing, FAA attorneys charged me with fabricating this safety problem in my detailed reports. Every one on board was killed in this Lake Michigan mishap, including a former president of the Air Line Pilots Association, whose silence helped bring about his death.

SALT LAKE CITY
A Boeing 727 crashed at Salt Lake City(6) with the loss of forty-three lives, due to three key, specific areas that I had reported:

• The initial crash was due to the pilot's high sink rate approach. Ironically, I had reported in my official reports that same dangerous approach technique of that same pilot. I made that report following an enroute inspection flight from Chicago to Denver via Omaha. As required by FAA directives, I recommended that the captain be removed from line flying until satisfactorily completing recurrent training in approach and landing techniques. That was not done. Ironically, I had made similar reports of two United Airlines FAA-approved check airmen, and was suspended from the program for two weeks in retaliation for making the report.

• The resulting fire that engulfed the aircraft and killed forty-three passengers was caused by the flight engineer's failure to turn off the fuel shutoff valves and the fuel booster pumps. After the crash landing, fuel lines broke open, and fuel poured out of the broken lines, under pressure from the operating fuel pumps, igniting as the aircraft slid down the runway for 2,000 feet. I had repeatedly reported the flight engineer training program to be dangerously inadequate, resulting in unqualified flight engineers who could not perform basic flight engineer duties. FAA management used these reports as the basis to charge me with psychiatric problems.

• Compounding the flight engineer's failure to perform, the crew poorly evacuated the passengers, even though time permitted everyone to be evacuated. I had repeatedly reported that United Airlines was falsifying its records to fraudulently indicate emergency evacuation training was given, when the training had not occurred. During the FAA grievance hearing, I conducted another examination of this training and filed a report stating the legal requirements were still being violated, as admitted to me by a UAL ground instructor responsible for performing the training. The FAA legal counsel and hearing officer falsely stated I never made any such reports. The reports entered into the FAA safety hearing proved these statements to be lies.

• Unlawfully dispatching the aircraft with an inoperative generator, the illegality having continued for over a dozen flights.

• Compounding the inoperative generator problem by dispatching an aircraft in which a second generator circuit panel was malfunctioning. Mechanics at Los Angeles tried unsuccessfully to fix the defective circuit panel.

• Flying aircraft without a backup flight attitude indicator powered by a battery source, making almost certain the loss of the aircraft if an entire electrical system failure occurred during instrument flight conditions. Every known airline in the world had a backup, battery-powered, attitude indicator in case this failure occurred. Except United Airlines.

• Poor knowledge of the aircraft systems by the engineer and the pilots, who shut down one of the two engines with the operating generators, causing the entire electrical load, including the ship's galley, to be powered by a single generator. This action caused the remaining generator to fail and all electrical power to be lost to the aircraft and flight instruments. Without instruments, at night, in the clouds over the Pacific Ocean the plane crashed with the loss of everyone on board.

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