Aviation

Citation

(1999), "Aviation", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 8 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.1999.07308dac.007

Aviation

Aviation

20 July 1998 - Cavalese, Italy

Keywords: Accidents, Air transport

The family of two victims of last February's Italian cable car disaster today petitioned US President Bill Clinton and the US Congress for permission to seek civil damages in the United States. Attorney John Arthur Eaves told a news conference he was filing papers on behalf on Peter Strzelczyk, a Polish citizen whose wife, Ewa, and son, Filip, 12, were killed when a US military aircraft struck and severed two lift cables holding up a gondola carrying skiers near the Italian resort of Cavalese. Twenty people plunged to their deaths. Earlier this month, the commander of Marine Corps forces in the Atlantic region ruled that the aircraft's Marine pilot and his navigator would be court-martialed on 20 counts of negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter and other charges. Under a 1951 NATO agreement, victims are obliged to seek restitution from the Italian authorities and judicial system. Italy would then be reimbursed by the United States. "While we hope that the Italian government proceeds expeditiously and fairly in adjudicating these claims, we believe that the United States government should assume responsibility for the tragedy and make restitution to the families of the 20 victims of this disaster", Eaves said. He was seeking permission to file for $5 million for the death of Filip Strzelczyk and $5.4 million for Ewa. "We believe the fairest way to resolve these claims would be for the civil trial to be held in the United States", Eaves said. The Pentagon said the US position was that the case should be pursued in Italy. Defence Secretary William Cohen during a visit to Rome last month urged victims' families to file their claims in Italy. "We are encouraging those who have suffered, the families who have lost their loved ones, to file their claims as quickly as possibly with the Italian authorities and we have an agreement whereby the United States will fulfil its obligations under the Status of Forces here in Italy", he said, referring to the 1951 agreement governing the case. Investigators have determined that at the time of the 3 February crash, the EA-6B Prowler was flying below 300 ft and too fast - both in apparent violation of flight training rules when the aircraft clipped a cable car wire. The military has contended the crew was "hot-dogging" or "flat-hatting" - both terms for showing off at dangerous altitudes and speeds.

17 July 1998 - Asmara, Eritrea

Keywords: Air transport, Accidents

A Ukrainian Ilyushin IL-78 cargo plane crashed early today near the Eritrean capital Asmara with ten crew on board, the former Soviet republic's emergencies ministry said. "Our information is still only preliminary, we don't know what has happened to the crew", emergencies ministry spokesman Oleh Bykov said. Bykov said the aircraft had been rented by a Bulgarian company in February. He was unable to give details of what cargo it may have been carrying but said the aircraft had been en route from Bulgaria's Black Sea port of Bourgas. "The crew was made up of nine people and one person accompanying the cargo", said Bykov. "We hope somebody is still alive", he said.

20 July 1998 - Ukrainian officials arrived in the Eritrean capital Asmara today to investigate the crash of a Ukrainian Iluyshin IL-78 cargo aircraft near the city on Friday (17 July). A team of investigators from the Ukrainian Civil Aviation Authority will work with Eritrean aviation experts, a government official said. The aircraft crashed in the early hours of Friday morning into a hillside 9km from Asmara. All ten crew members were killed. The aircraft aborted its first attempt at landing and was circling round for a second attempt when it crashed, the official said.

21 July 1998 - Singapore

Keywords: Air transport, Accidents

A US$25 million lawsuit has been filed in the United States against aircraft maker Boeing Co. following the December crash of a SilkAir Boeing 737-300 (9V-TRF) which killed all 104 people on board, a lawyer said today. "The litigation has started in the United States", said Gerald Sterns of San Francisco law firm Sterns Walker & Lods. The suit has been filed in New York by Kreindler & Kreindler on behalf of the family of Suzan Picariello, a US citizen and a senior executive with Amex International, who died in the crash. Sterns said it was seen as a test case by lawyers acting for victims' families which, if successful, could trigger a wave of litigation against Boeing for compensation payments for the accident, the cause of which remains a mystery. "We decided it would be best to go only with the American case at this time that Kreindler has filed because of the problems of jurisdiction of venue", Sterns said. "That's going to be kind of our stalking horse case. If we can keep that in the United States then maybe we can deal with the Asian cases as a follow on", he added. Legal conventions in air crashes limit possible litigation venues to the destinations printed on tickets and the country of origin of the flight, in this case Singapore or Indonesia. However, jurisdiction issues can be overcome if lawyers can show wilful misconduct on the part of the aircraft's manufacturer, possible if the crash was found to have been caused by the failure of any part of the structure of the aircraft. "We're working very closely with Kreindler and we think we've got an aerodynamic theory", Sterns said. The aircraft, operated by Singapore Airlines Ltd unit, SilkAir, plunged from a stable cruising altitude of 35,000 ft over Palembang during a flight from Jakarta to Singapore. Compensation to victims families has been offered by the airline at up to US$75,000 per person, its maximum legal liability under its terms of carriage. Crash investigators have yet to determine what caused the fatal accident that claimed the lives of all 97 passengers and seven crew on board, although a partial reconstruction of the aircraft from recovered wreckage is under way in Indonesia. Examinations had focused on the tail section of the aircraft, found some 4km away from the main wreckage, which plunged into the Musi river in Sumatra. Boeing issued a statement to quash speculation missing tail section fasteners caused the freshly-inspected ten-month-old aircraft to crash, a theory which led the US Federal Aviation Administration to order checks on some 200 Boeing 737s. Investigators have been hampered in their work by the mysterious failure of both flight recorders in the crucial minutes before the aircraft fell from the sky. Data in both recorders was then corrupted by water from the river from which the wreckage was dredged over several weeks.

24 July 1998 - A press report, dated Singapore July 24, states: In its strongest stand to date, US plane manufacturer Boeing said responsibility for the SilkAir crash last December lay with the airline's aircraft maintenance personnel. The Seattle-based aircraft manufacturer denied any responsibility for the fatal crash last year involving a Boeing 737-300 (9V-TRF) in which 104 people died. It was responding to a US$2.5 million negligence suit filed against it by the companion of crash victim Suzan Picariello, a senior vice-president of American Express International. Boeing denied the negligence claim and filed court documents earlier this month seeking the dismissal of the lawsuit filed in a New York federal court. Boeing said in the court documents that responsibility for the crash lay with SilkAir personnel in charge of the aircraft's maintenance, according to an AFP report yesterday. The suit, filed by US law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, is expected to be the first of several by victims' families, in an apparent attempt to force investigators to release more information on the possible cause of the accident. When contacted in Jakarta yesterday, Indonesian chief investigator Oetarjo Diran declined to say when a preliminary report would be issued. "We are still in the process of collecting facts, the investigations are being done by the book", he said. Some 70 people from Indonesia, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and the Bureau of Air Safety Investigations (BASI) in Australia are involved in the ongoing investigations. In a letter to the court, Boeing also said the issue of its responsibility could only be invoked under the Death on the High Seas Act. This legislation provides for compensation for the families of sailors for the loss of income, the report said, but it does not cover awards for psychological trauma, which can run into the tens of millions of dollars in the US.

31 July 1998 - near Quiberon, France

Keywords: Air transport, Accidents

French rescue crews resumed their search at dawn today for the victims of yesterdays mid-air collision as investigators probed how the two small planes could have crashed off the Atlantic coast killing 15 people. Eight bodies were still missing. Seven recovered bodies were in a temporary morgue at Quiberon. One of the planes, a Beechcraft of the Proteus Air System, SARL, was flying from Lyon to Lorient with 12 passengers and two crew members. The second plane, a single-engined Cessna belonging to a local flying club, had only one person on board. Fabien Beaumont, a photographer for a local newspaper, said the plane he was flying in while taking pictures of m passenger vessel Norway had just turned to go home when a crash warning came over the plane's radio. "Right ahead of us, we saw a plane falling. It was a Beechcraft that had just hit a Cessna", he told LCI television. French radio and television said the Beechcraft had changed its normal route to fly over the cruiser. "If he changed his route, he must have had a good reason to do so", said Franklin Devaux, chief of the Proteus airline, who said the pilot was an experienced flyer with 3,800 flight hours to his name.