| | 2004 Crash in Afghanistan Highlights Gaps in U.S. Control Over Flights The New York Times
05/28/2007
By Matthew L.Wald
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WASHINGTON - Carrying three soldiers and two pallets of mortar shells through the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, the twin-engine turboprop was on a military mission.
But Flight BW61 from Bagram Air base was technically an air taxi, according to civilian safety officials. That distinction may have contributed to a Nov. 27, 2004, crash that killed everyone on board - and may put at risk thousands of military passengers and thousands of tons of cargo every year by contractors in war zones.
Neither military nor Federal Aviation Administration safety rules were enforced on the flight, which was operated by a subsidiary of Blackwater USA. Standard safeguards - high-altitude oxygen masks and at least one pilot experienced with the terrain - were not observed. And there was no dispatcher to send an alert that the plane was missing, which delayed rescuers? arrival and possibly compounded the tragedy.
The three-man crew and two of the passengers died on impact, a military investigation found. But a third passenger apparently lived for at least eight hours, long enough to climb out of the plane, smoke a cigarette and unroll two sleeping bags before dying of internal injuries.
The safety lapses emerged in investigations by the military and the National Transportation Safety Board, and in a lawsuit filed by families of the crash victims against Blackwater, which is seeking to have the suit thrown out in federal court.
With two American-flag carriers and three foreign companies performing contract work for the military in Afghanistan, other flights could also be in peril because of gaps in regulation. Though the N.T.S.B. recommended in December that the military and the Federal Aviation Administration coordinate on oversight of flights operated by military contractors, the F.A.A. responded earlier this year that it would not give a progress report for six months.
The Pentagon, though, said Blackwater would begin auditing its own flights in Afghanistan and reporting the results to the government. While the F.A.A. does not fly on the planes in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said government quality-assurance personnel "randomly fly" on them.
Even though Flight BW61 was operating in Afghanistan, the F.A.A. had jurisdiction over it because the agency considered it an American air taxi. The plane, a Spanish-made CASA 212, was operated by Presidential Airways, the Blackwater unit that won a $35 million contract in September 2004 from the Air Mobility Command at the Pentagon. The Pentagon needed small planes to carry cargo and passengers at high altitudes into the rough landing strips typical in Afghanistan.
Families of the victims say that if it had been a military flight, it might not have crashed. The crew's unfamiliarity with the route is clear from the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder.
"I hope I'm goin' up the right valley," said the captain, Noel B. English, according to the transcript. "We'll see where this leads."
Mr. English, 37, was an experienced pilot who had done extensive mountain flying in Alaska in the same type of airplane, according to investigators. The co-pilot, Loren D. Hammer, 35, also had substantial experience, and had flown the CASA in smoke-jumping operations.
But they had been in Afghanistan only 13 days. Common military and civilian practice is to pair a pilot who is new to an area with a veteran, experts said. Eventually, the two men flew into a box canyon, essentially a dead end bordered by mountains. Despite excellent daylight weather, they waited too long to begin climbing, which would have allowed them to fly over the mountains, or make a U-turn.
The captain at one point said he did not want to go up to 14,000 feet in the unpressurized plane, but later, with terrain rising, he said, "If we have to go to fourteen for just a second, it won?t be too bad."
Less than two minutes before impact, evidently still trying to climb, he said urgently: "Come on baby, come on baby, you can make it." A mechanic, flying in the cockpit and assisting with navigation, said, "You guys are gonna make this, right?"
"Yeah, I'm hopin'," the captain said.
"Hope we don't have a downdraft comin' over that, dude," the mechanic added, evidently referring to a nearby mountain peak. Such downdrafts are common in the mountains, experts say. "Got a way out?" he asked. "You need to make a decision."
Seconds later, the plane slammed into the mountain.
Robert F. Spohrer, a lawyer for the families of the dead passengers, argued that if the flight had been operated by the military, better safeguards would have been imposed.
"This was infinitely worse than any armed forces flight would have been," he said. "It would have had triple redundancy, with checklists," he said. "In the military, you plan your flight and fly your plan. These guys did neither."
The flight did not follow some civilian rules, either. The N.T.S.B., for example, concluded that the pilots were not wearing oxygen masks, as air taxi operators are required to do in unpressurized cabins at that altitude.
And no one on the ground tracked the plane from takeoff to landing, as federal civilian safety rules require. The Defense Department has a system for tracking its own planes, and even in areas with poor radio communication, the military takes notice immediately if a flight is overdue.
But no search was begun for Flight BW61 until the plane was overdue for its return to Bagram, about seven hours after the crash; rescue forces spent the first five hours looking in the wrong place. They did not reach the site until the third day, by which time Specialist Harley D. Miller, 21, of Spokane, Wash., had died of his injuries.
The safety lapses have frustrated families of the victims. "It was in the middle of a gray zone," said Col. Jeanette McMahon, the widow of one of the passengers, Lt. Col. Mike McMahon. Colonel McMahon, like her late husband, is a helicopter pilot.
Blackwater declined to comment for this article. But the company argued to the N.T.S.B. that the safety board had no jurisdiction to investigate the crash because it was a military flight. The safety board did not send anyone to Afghanistan, the company pointed out, but relied on facts gathered by the military search and rescue team. And the military had so botched the fact-gathering phase that no reliable inquiry was possible, Blackwater said.
The company is expected to appeal to the safety board for a reconsideration of its findings.
After the safety board panel recommended that the F.A.A. and the Defense Department coordinate their oversight of such flights, the F.A.A. responded in language as close to arch as the bureaucracy gets. "It is not our practice to send inspectors into areas of military hostilities to conduct en route inspections," the F.A.A. said in February. "We do not believe that the risk to our personnel can be justified as necessary for the effective accomplishment of our safety mission."
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