A Few Discrepancies

With two engines dead and a third one wheezing, an elderly Lockheed Constellation last month crashed near Richmond, Va., killing 74 Army recruits and three crew members. The plane was owned by Imperial Airlines, a nonsked company in Miami, operating under contract with the U.S. Army. Last week, after a four-week investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board into the possible cause of the crash, it seemed a wonder that Imperial's Constellation had got off the ground in the first place. Items :

>Pilot Ronald H. Conway, 29, who survived the crash, failed three flight tests early in his career, although he later passed his multi-engine and transport-rating tests without a failure.

>Imperial regularly had so many maintenance problems that they took up half the time of a Federal Aviation Authority inspector in Miami, who reported the company this year had such "discrepancies" as hydraulic leakage, faulty fuel indicators, improper rigging of mixture control, a bald nose-gear tire, and fuel seepage under the wing.

>The doomed Constellation's fuel was "contaminated" by rust sediment.

>An FAA inspector testified that Imperial flight crews could not know what condition their planes were in because their aircraft logbooks were not kept up to date.

>When the two engines went out, Pilot Conway asked the flight engineer to open an emergency valve that would have permitted an extra flow of fuel to both dead engines. But Copilot James Greenlee, who was killed in the crash, canceled the request and the valve stayed shut. Testified Conway: "I would much rather have seen that valve open."

But perhaps the strangest evidence of all was that Chief Flight Engineer John Mayfield had blithely repaired a fuel pump motor on the Constellation the day before the crash by cutting down a brush taken from a 1954 Mercury automobile generator. As it turned out, the engine with the ersatz part kept going during the fatal flight. But engineers from established airlines blinked in dismay at Imperial's incredibly slipshod methods of maintenance. Said one: "They must have been a little desperate."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.