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The Makani Kai Air Cessna crash that led to the death of state Department of Health Director Loretta Fuddy three years ago off Molokai’s Kalaupapa peninsula could have been prevented, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The report released Monday states that it’s likely that the airline would have discovered possible “abnormalities” in the plane’s engine and prevented the accident if airline officials had followed the engine manufacturer’s guidelines. The report said that Fuddy, who was found wearing a partially inflated infant life vest, “might have been able to find” an adult vest if the pilot had provided a safety briefing before the flight.
“If the pilot had provided a safety briefing, as required by Federal Aviation Administration regulations, to the passengers that included the ditching procedures and location and usage of flotation equipment, the passengers might have been able to find and use the correct size flotation device,” the NTSB report said.
Makani Kai Air owner Richard Schuman defended his company and his former pilot, Clyde Kawasaki, and is looking at possibly legal action against engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney Canada.
The probable cause of the accident on Dec. 11, 2013, was the “loss of engine power due to the fracture of multiple blades on the compressor turbine wheel,” according to the report. The NTSB could not determine the reason for the blade failures because of “secondary thermal damage” to the blades.
Logbooks showed that the engine had reached its manufacturer-recommended time between overhaul, 3,600 hours, about a year and a half before the accident. The engine’s life was extended by 200 hours and later to 8,000 hours total under the Maintenance on Reliable Engines Supplemental Type Certificate inspection program.
The report states that the inspection program was meant to “supplement, not replace,” the engine manufacturer’s Instructions for Continued Airworthiness and its maintenance program. The program requires more frequent borescope inspections of the hot section, periodic inspections of the compressor and exhaust duct areas and periodic power plant adjustment/tests.
The program did not require compressor blades to be reviewed, but the evaluation was contained in the engine maintenance manual and an engine manufacturer service bulletin, according to the report. No evidence of the evaluation was found.
The NTSB states that the combined guidance documentation provided to Makani Kai Air was “confusing,” which caused the airline officials to believe the compressor blade evaluation was unnecessary.
Schuman said “confusing” is the “wrong word,” adding that the service bulletins are issued about every six months and act as a continuous improvement program. He said the bulletin that required the compressor blade evaluation was issued to the United States after the accident.
“That’s the part that our attorneys are after,” he said. “They’re putting something together to say, ‘Hey Mr. Manufacturer, how can you even say something as stupid as you should have done this when you didn’t have it in place?’ “
Schuman said his airline does inspections more frequently than the manufacturer recommends and conducts additional safety measures. He said he also follows all Federal Aviation Administration requirements and knows the consequences of failing to do so.
“If you know something is wrong, you have to fix it because people die,” he said. “If it comes out that you were at fault, not only do you lose your airline, you’re facing criminal negligence federal homicide charges.”
Schuman said he came to believe that the Cessna’s engine was faulty after discovering that Pratt & Whitney changed its manufacturing processes due to several of its engines failing during flight. He said the company’s engines have been linked to seven in-flight accidents in a span of a little over 24 months, including the forced landing of a Mokulele Airlines flight on Piilani Highway in Kihei two months prior to the Kalaupapa crash.
Schuman said he would have grounded all his planes if he had known there was a possible issue with the engines.
“I wouldn’t have flown it if it had to save my life and my mother’s,” he said.
A spokesman for the Canadian-based P&WC could not immediately respond for comment Tuesday due to the time difference.
With regard to the life vests, Schuman said that after the plance ditched, several passengers got out of their seats and headed to the exit without thinking about the vests. He said nearly all of them had traveled numerous times on that airplane or similar ones and knew the safety briefing.
“To say that they didn’t get the life vests because they didn’t get the safety briefing – that would be a lie,” he said.
Schuman said life vests are regulated by the FAA and the ones for infants look exactly the same as those for adults. He did not know how or why Fuddy’s vest was partially inflated.
The FAA has required Makani Kai Air to place all infant life vests in an outdoor compartment under the plane, Schuman said. He said he offered to paint the package pink or do other things to label the infant vests.
“The FAA could make the manufacturer do it and say starting tomorrow morning all infant life vests have a baby on the cover and are colored pink,” he said. “They call up the manufacturer, and those guys would have to do it overnight or have a recall of all life vests.”
No penalties or additional restrictions have been placed by the FAA on Makani Kai Air, Schuman said.
Illinois resident Bruce Briley, who survived the crash with his wife, said he could not recall whether he was given a safety briefing on the fateful flight headed to Oahu. However, he said nearly all the passengers were given the same briefing on the flight to Molokai earlier in the day.
Briley said he and other passengers were under extreme stress after the crash and went straight to the door without thinking about the life vests. He said most of the passengers were given vests at the back of the plane as they exited into the water.
“I consider Kawasaki the primary hero of that event,” he said. “If he didn’t do what he did, we’d all be dead.”
Briley said Fuddy was not “flapping wildly” as if she were going to drown and did not know she was wearing an infant life vest. He said she was with Deputy Health Director Keith Yamamoto, and the passengers seemed to be “reasonably comfortable considering the circumstances.”
“She did not drown as I recall, and no one claimed she had drowned,” he said. “If it’s true that she had an infant life vest on, it didn’t put her life at real risk.”
Briley admitted that the vests were “awkward” and that he along with several others were unable to close the belt across their bodies. He said he had to grip the vest hard and push it down so it didn’t choke him or slip over his head.
However, the biggest difficulty was opening the packaged life vests, which were slippery in the water. He said another passenger had to rip open the packages for him, and that Kawasaki gave his wife another flotation device to keep her afloat.
“I think something ought to be done so they have an easy strip off,” he said. “Like a string around it and one pull would loosen it.”
Briley wrote a book on his survival, “On a Wing and a Prayer: A True Story by A Survivor of a Tragic Crash in the Pacific Ocean.” Copies will be available on Amazon.com in a couple of weeks.
He said one of the biggest effects the crash has had on him and other passengers is listening to flight attendants during safety briefings.
“You don’t listen,” he said. “You’ve been on it 100 times. You don’t think about it and fully grasp the significance of that little thing (life vests) and what it can do if you hope to survive a crash.”
* Chris Sugidono can be reached at csugidono@mauinews.com.