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"They were dead the moment they started the engines," concluded Donald Land, father of George Land, who was the first officer on Emery Worldwide Airlines (EWA) Flight 17. The DC-8 freighter crashed into an automobile auction lot during a desperate Feb. 16, 2000, attempt to return to Mather Field in Rancho Cordova, Calif., from which the plane had taken off just two minutes before.
Unable to lower the nose, the crew thought they had a center-of- gravity (CG) problem with the airplane's 65,000-lb. cargo load. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) has First Officer Land telling Capt. Kevin Stables and Flight Engineer Richard Hicks, "We're gonna have to land fast." The crew's last transmission to air traffic control was "Emery 17, extreme CG problem." The pilots had no way of knowing they were dealing with a flight control problem that felt like a CG problem.
The airplane, as it turned out, was missing the bolt connecting the right elevator pushrod to the elevator tab control arm. When the elevator tab is moved up or down, the aerodynamic force moves the entire elevator. Since the elevators are aerodynamically balanced to move to the nose-up position, there is insufficient nose-down force from a correctly connected elevator tab on the opposite side to overcome a disconnected right tab.
The connecting bolt is a life-or-death part. During two days of recent fact-finding hearings by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), its first public deliberations into a cargo jet crash, it was revealed that the bolt was never found at the accident site (see ASW, May 20). It was apparent that the bolt most likely had been installed backward. Absent a restraining cotter pin, the bolt could slip out.
It was a maintenance error that killed. A ratcheting sound was picked up on the CVR, possibly indicating that elevator movement was restricted. According to Frank Hildrup, NTSB investigator-in- charge, "The elevators never traveled below neutral."
The flightcrew did not know. As a result of a history of jammed elevators (including a 1972 case involving an axe handle wedged in the elevator hinge line), DC-8 crews were required to conduct a preflight check of elevator movement, and another check while passing through 80 knots on takeoff (for a telltale "dip" in...