Enough Blame To Go Around In Valujet Crash Airline, Maintenance Contractor And Faa To Be Named In Report

Fifteen months after 110 people died in the crash of a ValuJet DC-9 in the Florida Everglades, federal accident investigators today will formally assign blame for the disaster.

While the details of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) report are not yet available, the broad outlines have been known for months.

Three players - the airline itself; SabreTech, a maintenance contractor; and the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees both companies - are expected to share in the blame to be outlined at Tuesday’s meeting.

The May 11, 1996 scheduled flight from Miami to Atlanta was six minutes old when the crew reported a fire on board and the need to return to Miami International Airport. Four minutes later, ValuJet Flight 592 disappeared into the swamp.

Investigators have determined that a fire in the cargo hold, caused by oxygen generators, brought the plane down. Capt. Candalyn Kubeck, a day past her 35th birthday, was the pilot.

NTSB officials have consistently faulted Atlanta-based ValuJet, a start-up carrier that had rapid growth before the crash, for failing to have standard procedures that govern every aspect of its business - from loading cargo to responding to emergencies.

Since the airline’s grounding and subsequent re-start last year, company executives have stressed ValuJet’s commitment to such standards.

ValuJet and Phoenix-based SabreTech have engaged in a nasty fight in which each has essentially denied responsibility for the crash and tried to implicate the other. They have traded charges over how the oxygen generators, which produce intense heat when activated, wound up in the cargo compartment.

The airline, at the time, was forbidden from carrying hazardous materials, which include the generators. A ban on carrying the generators on all passenger and cargo flights was issued shortly after the crash.

SabreTech workers packed the oxygen generators, which had been removed from other ValuJet planes, in boxes without attaching safety caps or properly labelling the boxes, according to NTSB documents.

ValuJet contends that the workers knowingly mislabeled the boxes to get them off a hangar floor in advance of an inspection by a prospective customer, Continental Airlines.

“ValuJet believes SabreTech personnel may have falsified the shipping ticket because they believed the process of proper disposal and transport of the generators would take too much time,” a ValuJet statement said.

The airline has asked the safety board to investigate further, saying the NTSB and the public “have only gotten half the story” about the crash.

SabreTech has denied ValuJet’s charges. The airline, SabreTech said in a submission to the safety board, should have issued specific instructions for disposing of the generators.

NTSB officials and relatives of the victims have said the fire might never have spread if the cargo compartment had been equipped with the kind of detection and firefighting tools the NTSB has advocated since 1988.

But the FAA did not announce rules requiring the equipment in planes with sealed cargo holds until June of this year. It will be 2001 before all planes carry detectors and extinguishers in the cargo compartments.