A few hours ago, USA Today published a lengthy investigative report devoted to small aircraft crashes. The conclusion:  aviation manufacturers have long concealed the fact that their defectively designed products cause aircraft crashes and injures. And the investigating agencies, including the NTSB and FAA, let them get away with it.

The report covers many of the issues we’ve touched upon before on this blog, from defective carburetors, to defective pilot seats, to faulty ice-protection systems. The report also covered a subject we’ve covered on this blog extensively – post crash helicopter fires in otherwise survivable accidents:

One of the most gruesome and long-standing problems has caused scores of people to be burned alive or asphyxiated in fires that erupt after helicopter crashes. Such deaths are notorious because they can occur after minor crashes, hard landings and rollovers that themselves don’t kill or even injure helicopter occupants. The impact can rupture helicopter fuel tanks, sending fuel gushing out, where it ignites into a lethal inferno.

Using autopsy reports and crash records, USA TODAY identified 79 people killed and 28 injured since 1992 by helicopter fires following low-impact crashes. In 36 non-fatal crashes, fire destroyed or substantially damaged helicopters after minor incidents such as rollovers, crash reports show.

The report didn’t mention the most recent Robinson fire that killed the R44’s pilot at Birchwood Airport in Alaska just two weeks ago.

Pilot error?

I’ve been saying for years that many crashes that the NTSB attributes to "pilot error" simply aren’t. The USA Today report backs that up.  The report discussed the fatal crash of a single engine Piper following engine failure.  The NTSB chalked up the engine failure to pilot error.  But, as it turns out, the crash was caused by a defective carburetor float. The judge handling the case noted that the carburetor manufacturer had received more than 100 warranty claims for similar problems before the crash. Yet none of that product history made it into the NSTB report.

Ruling against Lycoming  [the engine manufacturer] and Precision [the carburetor manufacturer], Philadelphia Judge Matthew Carrafiello found evidence both might be culpable. Precision received more than 100 warranty claims concerning carburetor defects, the judge said, and Lycoming continued to use the carburetors even though it "knew of ongoing problems" with the carburetors "and of numerous plane crashes resulting from such problems.

None of that information was included in the NTSB investigation, which was aided by Lycoming and Precision and blamed Andy Bryan, the pilot, for "failure to abort the takeoff" and "failure to maintain adequate airspeed during takeoff."

According to the report, many of the crashes that the NTSB concludes are due to pilot error are actually due to defectively designed aircraft.

Federal accident investigators repeatedly overlooked defects and other dangers of private aviation as they blamed individual pilots for the overwhelming number of crashes of small airplanes and helicopters . . . The failure of crash investigators to find defective parts, dangerous aircraft designs, inadequate safety features and weak government oversight helped allow hidden hazards to persist for decades, killing or injuring thousands of pilots and passengers . . .

Manufacturers mislead the FAA

Part of the problem is that the NTSB does not travel to the site of many small airplane crashes, leaving the on-scene investigation to the FAA. Unfortunately, according to a former NTSB investigator, the FAA personnel don’t have the same investigative experience as the NTSB investigators and are easily duped by the manufacturers.

Many times what happens now is that when the accident occurs, the technical rep of the (manufacturing) company will call the NTSB and say we’ll be party (to the investigation), we’ll go out there and let you know what we see … the only people on scene would be perhaps an FAA guy and the field rep of the manufacturer," said Douglas Herlihy, a former NTSB investigator who now reconstructs crashes, often for plaintiffs in lawsuits against manufacturers.

"If you (the NTSB) are not there, you’ve got the representative from the company at the scene. His job is to skew the facts, to ignore the product difficulties and to remove the question of liability," Herlihy said.