Hearings on Aug. 2 Tragedy End : Jet Crash Unavoidable, Texas Witnesses Agree

DALLAS —  Rudy Price, the veteran Delta Air Lines co-pilot at the controls of an L-1011 jumbo jet on final approach for Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, sounded confident:

“Delta 191 . . . out here in the rain, feels good,” he radioed in his last transmission to the control tower on Aug. 2. One minute and 53 seconds later, his plane slammed down onto a highway about a mile short of the runway, bounced back into the air and crashed into a water tank in a ball of flame. The crash took 137 lives.

Like the other members of the cockpit crew, Price did not live to testify during the four days of National Transportation Safety Board hearings that concluded here on Friday.

Agreement on Two Points

But, of the 32 witnesses who did testify, many appeared to agree about two things:

The first was that a phenomenon called “wind shear,” frequently associated with thunderstorms, was a major factor in the accident.

The second was that, like Price, no one in a position to do anything about heading off the tragedy saw it coming.

Witnesses from three different groups--air traffic controllers, National Weather Service representatives and airline pilots--all told the panel looking into the Delta crash that they were aware of cumulonimbus clouds building up along the approach to the airport.

Not Considered Serious

But these same trained observers all testified that they did not consider the situation serious.

Richard Bray, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist called in as a consultant to the investigators, said an analysis of data from the crashed airliner’s flight recorder indicated that the plane encountered violent wind shear--strong head winds that shifted without warning to strong tail winds, reducing the craft’s effective air speed and plunging it into a “rapid descent.”

William F. Smith, a former Lockheed test pilot, said his examination of the data showed that the plane “obviously . . . very definitely” encountered strong wind shear.

The first air traffic controller to pick up Flight 191 as it entered the airspace near the airport was Robert Hubbert, who radioed an advisory to the Delta cockpit about “a little rain shower just north of the airport.” Hubbert testified later that it did not seem dangerous to him.

No Cause for Alarm

Moments later, Flight 191 entered the airspace controlled by Randy Wason. Wason, warned by other approaching planes that rain was blocking their view of the runway--and overhearing tower conversations “about the winds being funny,” broadcast a general advisory that “we are getting some variable winds out there due to a shower.” Like Hubbert, Wason testified later that he had seen no cause for alarm.

He handed off Flight 191 to Gene Skipworth, who was handling the the final approaches to touchdown.

Skipworth said he saw a lightning flash but did not tell Flight 191 about it--despite federal regulations requiring the tower to report thunderstorms to pilots--because, “unless I’m sadly mistaken, just seeing a lightning flash is not indicative of a thunderstorm.”

Although Skipworth acknowledged that rain reported by Price and other pilots appeared to have cut visibility along the approach path to less than four miles, he said he did not broadcast that fact because regulations require such reports “only if it drops below four miles” in every direction.

A ‘Garden Variety’ Shower

Weather service representatives also seemed to have shared the controllers’ lack of concern. Jack Williams, a forecaster responsible for weather alerts at the airports, said he did not issue one because the storm looked to him like nothing more than a “garden variety” summer rain shower.

And, when the weather service did report the cloud buildup to the control tower, a technician left the report out of a recorded weather message put on the air for pilots about five minutes before the crash.

“It’s not our policy” to include such information in the broadcast, the technician, Barbara Foe, testified. “It’s not pertinent.”

Most of the pilots who testified also said they had also been unconcerned about the weather buildup at the airport on the evening of Aug. 2.

Capt. R. W. Hanel, whose American Airlines jet touched down about three minutes before the crash, said that, although he encountered some “heavy rain” on final approach, there was no turbulence, and he landed without difficulty.

Weather ‘Looked Harmless’

Rufus Lewis, whose Learjet followed Hanel in, said the weather “looked harmless” as he prepared to land.

But as his plane approached the runway, Lewis said, “there was light to moderate turbulence . . . and we encountered heavy rain, so heavy that once out of the clouds, we could not see forward out of the windshield.”

The next plane in was Delta Flight 191 and, right behind it, was an American Airlines DC-9 piloted by Capt. Frank Becker.

“I saw the lightning,” Becker testified. “I lost sight of the field. . . . I didn’t like what I saw.”

For Flight 191, it was already too late. Even as Becker was deciding to abort his landing, the tower ordered him to pull up because Flight 191 had crashed.

‘Cry-Wolf Syndrome’

Williams, the National Weather Service forecaster who had made the earlier decision not to issue a weather warning, told the board that his decision may have been prompted in part by the “cry-wolf syndrome.”

Only a few storms produce wind-shear effects, he said, and “if you put out a warning for every thunderstorm that pops up, you’re soon going to have the aviation community so jaded by warnings that don’t materialize that they’re going to tune you out. . . .

“It was a judgment on my part for not issuing a warning and on the part of the pilot for attempting to make a penetration (of the storm) . . . .

“Perhaps we were both wrong.”