Subject: 737 Crash In Colorado Springs

From: [email-masked] (Barnick, R.)
Date: 10 Dec 92 16:07:19 PST

In March 1991 a UAL 737 went down on final approach into COS.  The final
accident investigation report was released a couple of days ago and carried
no cause.  About four months ago a TWA flight leaving COS picked up a
federal investigator working the accident.  The investigator sat up front
in the jump seat.  The TWA flight deck crew wanted to know how the
investigation was going.  The following was relayed to me via one of the
flight crew members.

UAL recently lost some kind of case from its female employees which charged
gender discrimination.  UAL either lost or agreed to settle out of court. 
UAL agreed to correct conditions which caused the suit.  One correction was
to get more females in the cockpit.  The ill-fated 737 had a very junior
female first officer.  The pilot was male and also junior.  Cockpit voice
recordings (never yet fully released to public) indicated that when the
crew was informed of very gusty wind conditions in the COS area, they
seemed overly concerned.  They kept commenting about the wind.  These
frequent comments seemed irregular to the investigators.  Experienced
pilots wouldn't have spent so much time discussing the wind.  On final it
was speculated the aircraft took a good jolt from an air current or eddy. 
The crew, having psyched themselves up substantially, reacted in some
uncoordinated knee-jerk fashion resulting in the fatal error.  The
investigator went on to say that even if this sort of story could be
proven, it would never be made public.  To do would discredit UAL's gender
action, UAL's training, FAA's certification, and maybe further hurt an
already hurting industry.  

It seems odd that the final accident report that came out indeed did say
nothing.  

Please remember, this is a story told me second hand.  You're getting it
third hand.  But, if any truth about this crash is known, a sharing thought
would be interesting.

---

From: [email-masked] (Karl Swartz)
Date: 10 Dec 92 18:07:52 PST

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Barnick, R.) writes:
>In March 1991 a UAL 737 went down on final approach into COS.  The
>final accident investigation report was released a couple of days ago
>and carried no cause.

Just to complete the record, it was UA 585 (DEN-COS) on March 3, 1991;
5 crew and 20 passengers were killed.  The aircraft was N999UA, msn
22742, ln 875, a 737-291 (Advanced).  It was acquired from Frontier in
May, 1986, the last of 25 such aircraft.  (Two were 737-2A1(A) models.)

>The following was relayed to me via one of the flight crew members.

Fascinating.  Most of the speculation has been that the aircraft flew
into the eye of a rotor (much has been said about this on rec.aviation
by folks from the area) which proceeded to flip it.  Another story I
heard, from some United folks, was that there was some difference in
the rudder controls betwee these planes and United's 737-222s, and
that this in some way contributed to the crash.  I can't recall the
details, including whether it was a difference between the Advanced
and non-Advanced 737-200s, or an airline-related change that United
had not yet applied to the ex-Frontier aircraft.

>The investigator went on to say that even if this sort of story could be

This seems reasonable, and I've heard the same logic applied to
snuffing a report that allegedly recommended the immediate grounding
of Continental (c. 1989) on grounds of inadequate maintenance.  But
the CVR from the Air Florida 737 crash into the Potomac in Washington
certainly made those pilots look incompetent, and the United DC-8 that
went down in Portland in 1978 didn't seem much better.  Indeed, the
latter, as I understand it, motivated a *major* revision of United's
training program.  Perhaps gender-discrimination is a more sensitive
issue, though.

>It seems odd that the final accident report that came out indeed did say

I believe this is unique insofar as the NTSB is concerned.  Robert,
is this indeed true?

>third hand.  But, if any truth about this crash is known, a sharing thought

Thanks for sharing it.  If anybody else has anything substantial to
contribute on the matter, please send it in.

-- 
Karl Swartz	|INet	[email-masked]		
1-415/854-3409	|UUCP	uunet!decwrl!ditka!kls
		|Snail	2144 Sand Hill Rd., Menlo Park CA 94025, USA
 Send sci.aeronautics.airliners submissions to [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Lars-Henrik Eriksson)
Date: 11 Dec 92 03:35:19 PST

female first officer.  The pilot was male and also junior. 

I suspect that many people - particularly people not familiar with
aircraft operations - would believe that the problem was that UAL had
been "forced" to put a "a very junior female first officer" on the
flight. (We must assume that the F/O was had sufficient
qualifications, even if she was quite new - every pilot is very junior
in the beginning of their careers). That was not the problem at all -
it was UALs decision to put a junior captain on the flight together
with a very junior first officer.
--
Lars-Henrik Eriksson                            Internet: [email-masked]
Swedish Institute of Computer Science           Phone (intn'l): +46 8 752 15 09
Box 1263                                        Telefon (nat'l): 08 - 752 15 09
S-164 28  KISTA, SWEDEN                         Fax: +46 8 751 72 30

---

From: [email-masked] (Barney Lum)
Date: 12 Dec 92 00:06:27 PST

[email-masked] (Barnick, R.) writes:
>no cause.  
   [ ... possible "hushing of report" due to UA's situation with
         gender/hiring/crewmember second-hand story by friend...]

>It seems odd that the final accident report that came out indeed did say

(the following is derived from UPI articles in The Wall Street Journal
       and clari.news.aviation )

   The final report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board 
   did not "say nothing", but rather was unable to come to a definite 
   conclusion as to the cause of the crash.  However, it did indicate 
   two  "most likely" events leading to the crash:

      1) malfunction in the directional control system.
	  (The rudder is referenced, but could not be id'd as causal) 
      2) unusually severe atmospheric disturbance. (rotor)

The articles go on to say that it's the "first time since 1974 that the 
board could not identify the cause of a major aviation accident."

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