South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
B-17 crash raises questions about vintage plane safety
The roar of its four engines, the plexiglass nose, the bristling machine guns — for history buffs and aviation enthusiasts, few thrills compare with that of a flight aboard aircraft like the B-17 Flying Fortress, the World War II bomber that helped smash the Nazi war machine.
“It made you feel like you were back in the 1940s,” said commercial pilot Gloria Bouillon, who rode one last month and called it the best flight of her life. “They had it set up just like it would be if it was on a mission. You could put your head out of the hatch. It was windy. It was noisy. You could smell the fuel. It was much different from a flight now.”
But a deadly crash in Connecticut last week of the same B-17 has cast a pall over the band of brothers — and sisters — who enjoy riding in vintage planes and raised questions of whether machinery over 70 years old should be flying passengers.
The propeller-driven1945 bomber crashed Wednesday at the Hartford airport, killing seven of the 13 people aboard, after the pilot reported engine trouble on takeoff. The cause of the fiery wreck is under investigation.
Arthur Alan Wolk, a lawyer who specializes in crash litigation in Philadelphia, said Friday that the accident shows the risks associated with flying old planes: They break.
He said the rules for operating vintage aircraft are stringent, but he questioned whether compliance and training are adequate.
“No one alive ever flew or maintained one of these aircraft in service,” he wrote in a blog post.
“No one alive went through the military training program for these aircraft. The engines are old with no new parts being manufactured for decades. Even in service these aircraft needed the resources of a government to keep them flying. The aircraft and engines were never intended to last this long so intense maintenance and inspections are vital to continued safety.”
Since 1982, the National Transportation Safety Board has investigated 21 accidents involving World War II-era bombers. They resulted in 23 deaths. Three of the accidents involved B-17Gs, not counting the one that crashed Wednesday.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked that the NTSB during its investigation of the Connecticut accident look at the inspection and maintenance requirements on vintage planes and whether they need to be more rigorous.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said that if an issue is discovered during the investigation that might apply to the fleet, the agency will take appropriate action. Vintage planes need to be certified as airworthy by the FAA and are subject to periodic inspections. Owners can obtain an FAA “living history flight exemption” to offer flights to paying customers, but they must comply with extra federal requirements for safety and maintenance.
“I would not have any hesitation about flying in these aircraft,” said Dick Knapinski, a spokesman for the Experimental Aircraft Association of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, an organization of aviation enthusiasts and airplane restorers. The association flies one of the few remaining B-17s.
Its B-17 was scheduled to visit Hyannis, Massachusetts, over the weekend but did not plan to offer passenger flights out of respect for those connected to the tragedy, Knapinski said. The Connecticut crash reduces to nine the number of B-17s actively flying, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, near Dayton, Ohio.