Haueter explained the basics of the investigation—the recovery of the wreckage, the reconstruction in the hangar, the backdrive work in the simulator, and the multitude of tests on the rudder system. He didn’t say they were stumped, but he made it clear that they had not found the answer. “Mr. Chairman, at this time, I am not aware that any party to the investigation or any other persons or organizations have raised avenues of investigation that we have not pursued fully, or are currently examining.”
One by one, Haueter, Phillips, and other NTSB officials asked the witnesses to tell what the NTSB had found. Haueter and Phillips knew the answers to most questions before they asked them; the point of the big production was not to uncover new facts but to let the public hear the old ones. It was peculiar—NTSB investigators asking outsiders to describe what NTSB investigators had done—but that was how the agency worked. In the safety board’s just-the-facts-ma’am culture, it was preferable to let outsiders take the spotlight. That approach allowed the investigators to be impartial and kept them from speculating publicly about the cause.
Bill Jackson, the pilot who had ridden in the cockpit on Ship 513’s previous leg, testified how his knee was pressed against the microphone button, which would explain the gurgling sound the passenger heard in first class. An FBI agent testified about the examination of wreckage and how the agency had ruled out the possibility of a bomb. A parade of Boeing engineers explained the NTSB’s efforts to jam the rudder PCU, the simulations in M-Cab, and the tests on hydraulic fluid. All showed that the rudder and the 737 had performed properly.
McGrew had never testified at an NTSB hearing, but when he walked into the ballroom and saw the families sitting in a special section he realized that the purpose of the hearing was not to advance the investigation. This hearing was just a big show, a way for the NTSB to get publicity. After answering general questions about his education and his job at Boeing, he used the remaining questions to convey his main points—that the plane had passed every test and that Boeing was committed to safety.
He said his boss had told him “to go out and find the cause and, if it’s anything to do with the airplane, fix it.” He spoke proudly of his plane and its safety record, like he was boasting about his kid’s SAT scores. He wasn’t basing this testimony on some emotional tie he had to the plane, of course. It was all based on hard data. And the data showed his plane was incredibly safe. More than 2,600 737s were now in use in ninety-five countries, he said. The 737 had the best reliability of any airliner and—this was the data talking, mind you—the rate of 737 hull losses was extremely low.
Unfortunately for Boeing, McGrew did not come across well on the witness stand. His cool reserve about the plane’s record made him appear smug, and much of his testimony sounded rehearsed.
Toward the end, Phillips tossed him a softball question, asking if there was anything else he wanted to say. McGrew seized the opportunity, pointing out that the PCU from the USAir plane would not reverse, that the fluid was not significantly contaminated, and that there was no evidence of a jam. “That leads us, based on that data, to think that the rudder was doing what it was asked to be doing.”
In other words, the pilots did it.
The most unusual event of the week came during the lunch break on the second day, when about twenty family members held a press conference in a tiny meeting room down the hall from the ballroom. They took turns stepping up to the microphones to complain about the shoddy treatment they had received from USAir. “We believe the system for notification of next of kin is deeply flawed,” said Marita Brunner, whose brother-in-law Jeffrey Gingerich was killed in the crash. “It increases the anguish for the families.”
Joanne Shortley said she started calling USAir the minute that she suspected her husband, Stephen, was on the plane, but all she could get was a busy signal. When she finally got through, a USAir employee took her phone number and said the airline would call back. Her brother called the airline and was told that Stephen was not on the flight. Joanne’s children cheered. But hours went by and Stephen did not come home. Finally, the airline called back at 2:45 A.M. to say that he was on the plane. Like Brett, Joanne thought that her USAir coordinator was poorly trained and unprepared for the family’s grief. “She was not equipped in bereavement,” Joanne said at the news conference. “She was a saleswoman.”
Judy Lindstrom, whose husband, Gerald, was killed in the crash, complained that USAir had blocked her efforts to get a list of other families. “We had a great need to see each other and be with each other. I was told this was not something the airline would disseminate. We found out later that many of us had made the same request. We had to scramble and scratch to get together.” The families said they were forming the Flight 427 Air Disaster Support League to urge the government to appoint a family advocate who would help families after a crash. “We are demanding that this process be taken away from the airline,” Marita Brunner said.
Brett agreed with the group’s complaints, but he didn’t attend the news conference. He had kept his distance from the group. He wasn’t much of a joiner, and he did not want to get too wrapped up in the crash. It seemed as if some people in the group wanted to make the crash the centerpiece of their lives. He didn’t. He knew that he had to move on. He spent much of the week reading the docket in his room and exercising in the fitness center.
Reporters left the news conference and cornered Deborah Thompson, the USAir director of community affairs, on the mezzanine outside the ballroom. Was it true, they asked, that USAir had done a poor job?
Thompson said the process of identifying the passengers had gone slowly, but that the airline wanted to be sure the list was accurate. “You don’t want to give wrong information,” she said. She acknowledged that the family coordinators had not been trained and said that the airline planned to start training people so they would be better prepared in case of a future crash. “We want to do a better job. But that’s not to say I think we’ve done a bad job.”
Jim Hall, the NTSB’s new chairman, had just replaced the retiring Carl Vogt. A short man with sandy hair and a mild Tennessee drawl, Hall was a Vietnam veteran, a longtime Democratic activist, and a friend of fellow Tennessean Al Gore Jr. When he was nominated for the job in 1993, Washington Post columnist Al Kamen called Hall “a politically connected white male Democrat whose only transportation experience apparently is a driver’s license.”
Hall appeared to be a lightweight because he didn’t talk like an engineer. He used folksy Tennessee phrases and often sounded like Andy Griffith on Matlock. While other people were talking about dual concentric servo valves, Hall would be recounting something his mother had taught him. It didn’t help that he had a dog named Trixie in his office.
A friendly brown-and-white Welsh Corgi, Trixie belonged to Hall’s special assistant, Jamie Finch. Hall was an animal lover, but his three dogs and four cats were back home with his family in Tennessee. So he was glad to have Trixie around, even though she occasionally pooped on his carpet. He would throw tennis balls for her and reach down and pat her during meetings. At Christmas, he and Trixie walked through the office wearing matching Santa hats. She even had her own NTSB badge that said her title was “Safety Dog.”
The truth was that Hall was not a lightweight at all. He was a savvy political operator who knew how Washington worked. He was a loyal soldier in the Clinton-Gore crusade to make government more responsive to taxpayers. He was well connected at the White House and in Congress, so he had the clout to get the money and staff that the NTSB needed. But he also had an outsider’s perspective and would fuss at the NTSB engineers to make sure that they explained their findings in everyday English. In the NTSB’s ongoing fights with the FAA, he used his political skills behind the scenes and then, if that didn’t work, he would offer a few choice comments to the media.