When an ALPA member got blamed for a crash, it was a black eye for the entire organization. The union also had a stake because it acted like a law firm, defending pilots who were accused of violating federal air regulations. That was part of the reason for such high union dues (about $4,000 per year for a 737 captain). If pilots got into trouble, the union provided a lawyer and a technical representative (a pilot such as Cox) who defended the accused during the hearings and appeals. The union was good at representing its members, often convincing airlines and the FAA that they should reduce or drop charges, but that effectiveness made people at the NTSB, the FAA, and Boeing skeptical when ALPA said it would be unbiased in a crash investigation. How could the union defend its members and be unbiased?
It was rare that you ever saw Cox sweat, let alone make a mistake. He had tremendous self-confidence, which is why you felt so good with him in the captain’s seat. But on one flight in 1973, he got so frightened that he was afraid everyone on the plane was going to die.
He was nineteen, home from college for Christmas break and flying occasional trips as copilot on a Cessna 421, a two-engine propeller plane. On one flight he was assigned to be copilot to take several businessmen from Birmingham, Alabama, to Erie, Pennsylvania. The plane was heavily loaded with people and luggage, so Cox and the captain planned to stop in Pittsburgh and refuel. The plane picked up ice as it descended through the clouds to Pittsburgh, but they were not worried. Rubber boots on the leading edge of the wings inflated to crack the ice so it would fall off, and the propellers were heated so ice wouldn’t build up on the blades.
They landed in Pittsburgh without difficulty and spent about thirty minutes getting refueled. On the ground, they made a cursory check of the weather, but only for Erie. They had gotten through the clouds around Pittsburgh without difficulty and figured the weather there was no big deal.
They took off and started to climb back through the same clouds, which topped off at 5,800 feet. As they climbed, they realized that the small Cessna was taking on a tremendous amount of ice. It got so thick on the wings that the boots stopped working. Then they heard a horrible sound like a machine gun. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. It was the sound of the propellers hurling ice at the fuselage. The ice was building up so fast that the plane was getting dangerously heavy. They had the engines at full power, but the plane could barely climb.
Cox looked out the window and saw ice growing on the wingtip fuel tanks. It was forming a menacing-looking icicle a foot and a half long and growing by the minute. Another blob of ice had developed on the spinner, the hub at the center of the propeller blades, and it too was growing. The windshield was so covered with ice that it was opaque, and the pilots had diverted all the heat in the plane to the vents on the windshield. That made the cockpit extremely hot and left the passengers freezing in the back, but it was having little effect on the windshield. If Cox or the captain wanted to look outside, he had to squint through a tiny strip right above the vents where the ice had melted. Cox was sweating a lot—a combination of heat and fear.
The ice was so thick and heavy that the plane lost its ability to climb, even at maximum power. Cox and the captain discussed what they should do. They didn’t want to return to Pittsburgh because they would have to go back through the nasty clouds. So they decided to continue to Erie, where the weather was slightly better. At that point, Cox wondered if they would survive. He wasn’t thinking about dying, exactly. He was worrying about what would happen if they had to set the plane down in trees. It would rip the aircraft apart. At that point, dying would be a foregone conclusion.
As the captain flew the plane, Cox radioed to air traffic controllers, telling them the plane had a severe ice problem and that they were descending to the MOCA—the minimum obstacle-clearing altitude. It was the lowest they could fly and not worry about crashing into mountains and radio towers. Now that they were descending, the ice appeared to stop growing. It hadn’t shrunk, but at least it wasn’t getting worse. Cox was sweating so much now that he had soaked through two shirts. He normally wore his shirts buttoned all the way up and his ties tight around his neck, but now he had the collar unbuttoned and his tie loosened. His heart was racing.
When he flipped the lever to lower the landing gear, he heard the strain of the electric motors trying to open the gear doors. Grind, grind, grind. Then he realized what was happening: The doors had been frozen shut by the thick layer of ice on the belly of the plane. The pilots might never get the gear down. They would have to make a belly landing.
Grind, grind, grind. It sounded like the motors were ready to give up. Crack! The right gear door burst through the ice and opened. The gear went down. The plane wobbled a bit from the sudden drag on the right side of the plane.
Crack! The left door opened and down went the gear. They could land now… if they could only see the runway.
The captain had used the instrument landing system to line up and descend toward the runway. The ILS was designed for moments precisely like this one, so pilots could approach a runway without seeing it until the last minute. They squinted through the slit in the windshield, searching for the runway lights. As they finally saw the lights and prepared to land, Cox was thinking, If we keep the plane lined up, we should be okay.
Thirty feet above the runway, the plane stalled and plunged nose down toward the pavement. There was so much ice that it changed the aerodynamics of the aircraft and made it stall sooner than expected. The captain pushed the throttle lever forward and jerked back on the control column to bring up the nose.
Bam! The plane hit the runway on all three landing gear simultaneously. Ice broke from the belly and smashed into a million pieces on the runway. They taxied the plane to the terminal and opened the door. As the passengers got off, they teased the captain about the hard landing. “That was one of your worst,” one passenger said. Cox and the captain gave each other a knowing look. If the passengers only knew how close they had come to dying!
Thinking back on that flight, Cox could see several mistakes. They were in a hurry and got careless. They didn’t check the weather reports as thoroughly as they should have. They should never have flown in such bad conditions. Cox’s willingness to admit when pilots made mistakes was one of the reasons he was so well respected at the NTSB. He represented a new generation of ALPA investigators, one that was not so protective of pilots.
Yet, in the case of Emmett and Germano, Cox resisted any suggestion that they were to blame. He would grudgingly concede that it had been a mistake for them to pull back on the stick, but he would quickly add that it was an understandable response. At that point, they were watching the ground loom closer and closer. It was natural that they would want to pull the nose up to survive. Besides, Cox said, there was no procedure for pilots to follow if they had a rudder hardover. Such a situation was not mentioned in the pilots’ manuals, and it was not covered in their training. Plus, Emmett and Germano had had virtually no time to diagnose the problem and then decide what to do; it was only eight to ten seconds from the first bump caused by the wake turbulence until the plane was unrecoverable.
Pilot-error accidents have been around as long as there have been pilots. Modern statistics show that pilots are the primary cause in about 70 percent of commercial jet crashes. In a 1992 Anniston, Alabama, crash that Haueter investigated, the captain, a new employee of the airline, became subservient to the first officer. They were both trying to be cool and calm, ignoring the fact that neither of them knew where the airport was. At one point the captain said, “Hopin’ no one on here’s a pilot,” an indication that he hoped passengers wouldn’t notice the strange flight path they were taking. Both pilots were lost but would not admit it. They thought they were south of the Anniston airport, but they were actually north of it. The plane crashed in trees seven miles from the airport, killing the captain and two passengers.