Electra in the Wind

Engineers from Lockheed last week were examining two other mysterious mishaps: the midair disintegration of two turboprop Electras--over Buffalo, Texas, and Tell City, Ind.--at a cost of 97 lives. In one of the biggest and most expensive (estimated cost to all participants, including F.A.A. and the airlines: $25 million) test programs in aviation history, Lockheed has placed an entire airplane in a huge mechanical jig, is literally shaking it to test its vibration tolerances. A whole wing section complete with engines has been taken off the production line, is being twisted and bent to destruction to check its strength. All critical parts are being dye-tested for surface cracks, X-rayed for hidden flaws in the metal. Most rugged test of all: Lockheed pilots are flying a minutely instrumented Electra through the extremely turbulent "Sierra wave'' over California's Sierra Nevada mountains, are slamming into the wind-shears at high speed to see what happens in the clear-air turbulence reported at the time the two airline planes went down.

Lockheed will say nothing until the engineers are dead certain that they have pinpointed the cause of the crashes and have worked out a fix. But they are getting close, hope to have a verdict in ten days. The company has scheduled a meeting this week with representatives of the U.S. airlines that fly 115 Electras. Last week Federal Aviation Agency Chief Elwood R. Quesada flew out to a meeting with Lockheed Board Chairman Robert Gross, issued a statement saying that "we are satisfied that we are boring in on an area that is going to be definitive." In the meantime, added Quesada, under the FAA-imposed speed limit of 295 m.p.h.. the Electras in operation have "a margin of structural safety over and above any other aircraft in the commercial field."

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