Anderson and Donner discussed the event and decided it sounded serious enough to send people to Richmond. FAA investigator Jeff Rich quickly rented a car and raced down I-95 to the airport. The NTSB also dispatched someone.
The plane was still parked at the gate when Rich arrived. For three days, he and other investigators crowded into the cockpit and ran tests on the plane’s navigational computer, programming the computer so it thought the plane was flying and then checking to see how it might have sent a faulty signal. In the meantime, the plane’s flight recorder was sent back to Washington to be analyzed in the safety board’s lab. Ultimately, the roll was blamed on a faulty autopilot and on the pilots themselves, who did not realize the autopilot was steering the plane.
Two weeks later, Anderson’s home phone rang while she was in the shower bathing her cocker spaniel, Pepe Lopez (a dog her kids named after a brand of tequila). An Aviateca 737 that originated in Miami had crashed into the side of a volcano in El Salvador, killing all sixty-five people on board. The plane was making a final approach to San Salvador during bad weather. Early reports suggested that there weren’t many similarities with Flight 427, but no one could be sure. Clues to the Hopewell crash might be lying on the side of the volcano. Anderson packed her bags and flew to El Salvador.
Her first view of the crash came from the TV in her hotel room, which showed grisly pictures that would never be shown in the United States. The bodies were relatively intact, which told her this was a much different accident from Pittsburgh. The plane had probably struck the volcano with a glancing blow. The next day she got a Jeep ride as far up the 7,000-foot volcano as possible, but she had to climb the rest of the way in her blue FAA jumpsuit, wearing a 30-pound backpack loaded with tools, water, cameras, and biohazard gear. She had thought she was in great shape, a three-times-a-week runner, but the volcano was so steep that she had to crawl the last 50 feet on her hands and knees. When she reached the 6,400-foot level, where the plane had crashed, she lay on the ground gasping for breath, then looked up and saw an eighty-year-old Salvadoran woman grinning at her.
Anderson figured the woman had probably passed her going up the mountain. Maybe Anderson wasn’t in such good shape after all.
Anderson and investigators from Boeing, the NTSB, and the Salvadoran government climbed through the jungle and inspected the wreckage. The voice recorder was found and was sent back to the NTSB lab, but the plane’s data recorder was missing. Anderson figured a villager who lived near the volcano had probably stolen it, thinking it was some kind of safe box with money inside. That kind of looting was common at crashes in Third World countries. Investigators could often tell they were nearing a crash site because they started seeing people sitting outside their homes in airplane seats.
After analyzing the wreckage and the voice recorder and interviewing an air traffic controller, the investigators decided that the pilots were at fault. They had approached the airport from the wrong direction and had flown into the side of the volcano. The Richmond and El Salvador accidents ended up on a list with more than fifty other 737 incidents that were explained by mechanical malfunction, pilot mistakes, wake turbulence, or bird ingestion. They did not answer the riddle of Flight 427.
17. THE ANNIVERSARY
The Flight 427 Air Disaster Support League was making progress in its effort to improve treatment of families after a crash. On June 20, 1995, members of the league and three other crash groups met with Chairman Hall and Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena at the NTSB offices in Washington. The families from the other crashes had the same complaints as those from Flight 427: It took too long for the airline to figure out who had died, the coordinators for the airlines were inadequately trained, and the companies did a poor job of returning personal belongings.
Aides to Pena and Hall scribbled notes as the families listed their complaints. One of Pena’s aides kept reminding him to leave for another appointment, but he stayed for an additional forty-five minutes. He and Hall came away convinced that the government needed to help. They directed staff members to draw up legislation creating a new government office to assist families after a crash.
That summer, the Flight 427 Air Disaster Support League was organizing two days of events to mark the first anniversary of the crash. The group planned to have four memorial services, including one at the crash site on the night of the anniversary, and a luncheon for the families the following day.
Brett had not been active in the league. He agreed with its goals, but he wanted to keep his distance. When he and Joan’s brother Dan Lahart arrived in Pittsburgh for the anniversary, they stayed at the same hotel as other league members did, but they planned to skip the meetings and all but one of the memorial services. When they ate dinner at the hotel restaurant the night before the anniversary, they sat in a dark corner so they could have privacy.
Brett was hardly thrilled to be there, but he wanted to pay tribute to Joan and attend a memorial service at the place where she had died. He had endured the most painful days in the past year—his birthday, Christmas, her birthday—and hoped they wouldn’t hurt as much in the future. He had not dated anyone since he lost Joan and was not sure he ever could. “If I meet someone in the future that I want to marry, she will know deep down inside that this would not be happening, we would not be having children, had I not lost the first love of my life,” he said.
Brett and Dan visited the coroner’s office in the morning, to check whether any of the unclaimed shoes or jewelry belonged to Joan. None did. Then they drove to Sewickley Cemetery to see the monument to the passengers. It was a beautiful day, just like the day Joan died. Workers were planting 132 tulips that would honor the victims. Brett and Dan got choked up. They chatted with a woman whose husband had been on the plane. She said she often visited the memorial in the early morning and found the cemetery very peaceful.
But Brett didn’t find it the least bit peaceful, for it was directly in the flight path to the Pittsburgh airport. As he gazed at a memorial to the victims of one of the worst plane crashes in the nation’s history, USAir planes roared overhead. He felt as though they were taunting him.
Gradually, George David was getting his property back. It had been a year since he heard the Boeing 737 roar through the air and crash on the edge of his 62-acre farm, but he still found remnants of the crash. Despite the huge cleanup effort, no one from USAir, the NTSB, or Beaver County had bothered to remove the hundreds of yards of red police tape around his property that was stamped DANGER—HAZARDOUS MATERIALS. On misty days he could still smell the aroma of jet fuel. His farm had once been a great place to hunt deer, but most of them had been scared away by the men in plastic suits.
In the year since the crash, David, a police officer and part-time hay farmer, had watched a parade of cars go down his dirt road, ignoring a dozen NO TRESPASSING signs. He didn’t mind it if the visitors were families of the victims or USAir flight attendants who wanted to see where their coworkers had died. He had even hung a wreath in a tree for one of them. But he hated the souvenir hunters and the gawkers. Once, a woman walked up to him shouting, “Hey! Hey!” as he was quietly tracking a deer, which scared away the animal. Another guy had the nerve to come up to David’s door and snap a picture of David and his fiancée watching TV. What could anyone possibly want with that picture? Another time, he got into an argument with a stranger who refused to leave. Finally, David slugged the guy and he ran away.