DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
The US National Transportation Safety Board has withdrawn its allegation that an American Eagle ATR 72 which crashed in severe icing conditions did so partly due to the aircraft being certificated despite a known vulnerability to icing. It has re-worded its report to say that manufacturer ATR and its certificating authority, France's DGAC civil aviation authority, did not give "adequate warning and guidance" to airlines and crews on how to handle the aircraft in icing conditions.
The accident happened in 1994 at Roselawn, Indiana, killing all 68 people on board. Following objections from ATR, the DGAC and the US Federal Aviation Administration after the report was published in 1996, the NTSB has modified its verdict. The president of ATR North America John Moore now says: "We will not be filing any more petitions for reconsideration."
DGAC deputy director Gerard le Houx comments: "The aircraft did meet the [icing] requirements valid at the time by a considerable margin. But if you have an accident you must review those requirements."
ATR and the DGAC's original stance was that the pilots had flown the aircraft into icing conditions that were outside the criteria for safe ATR 72 operation, and remained in them flying a holding pattern, and that this was a causal factor not noted by the NTSB. The board still maintains that "the crew had no reason to believe that the aircraft's anti-icing and de-icing systems were performing inadequately." Moore still contends that the aircraft was flown "outside parameters" specified in the flightcrew manual.
The NTSB had accused the FAA of failing to notice the aircraft's alleged flaws in icing conditions. Now the NTSB's report concedes that the FAA could not have changed the aircraft's design for icing conditions, but that if the agency had been more involved in the certification it would have better understood subsequent incidents regarding "continued airworthiness".
Source: Flight International
