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Parallels Seen in Two Jet Crashes in 2013

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON - The crew of a U.P.S. cargo jet that crashed on approach to Birmingham, Ala., last August had planned to land by using a method that was rare for them, following a computer-generated path to give vertical guidance, according to testimony given Thursday at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing. But the crew changed its strategy in the last minutes because the onboard computer did not perform as they had planned, investigators said.

At the hearing, strong parallels emerged to the crash of an Asiana passenger plane at San Francisco International Airport five weeks earlier: heavy pilot reliance on automation, possible failure to anticipate its limits, not enough experience landing without a full instrument system, and failure to keep track of key parameters. In the Asiana crash, which killed three people and destroyed a Boeing 777, the issue was airspeed; in the Birmingham crash, of an Airbus A300, it was altitude. The safety board is also looking into fatigue in the Birmingham crash, which came shortly before 5 a.m. and killed both people on board.

The National Transportation Safety Board is holding hearings into the Aug. 14 crash of a U.P.S. cargo jet in Birmingham, Ala.

According to documents released by the safety board, the captain in the Birmingham crash, Cerea Beal, 58, had told co-workers that the schedule was very hard. "I can't do this until I retire because it's killing me," he was quoted as telling one co-worker. Cargo airlines were exempted from new, stricter flight and duty time rules initiated by the Federal Aviation Administration recently in response to the crash of a commuter plane in Buffalo five years ago.

But U.P.S. said that it provided sleeping rooms in excess of F.A.A. requirements and operated a "fatigue working group" with the union. "Crew rest is a complex concept," the company said in a statement. It did not always follow, the company said, that "a pilot who flies at night must be tired."

Cargo pilots, though, face the challenge of habitually flying at night, then transitioning to a daytime schedule on off-duty days.

U.P.S., the Federal Aviation Administration and the pilots' union have submitted analyses on whether adherence to the stricter passenger rules would have changed the crew's work schedule.

"There is no reason to exempt pilots simply because they're carrying pallets rather than passengers," said the safety board chairwoman, Deborah A. P. Hersman, but she cautioned that the board had not yet determined if applying passenger rules to this plane would have made a difference.

Fatigue, though, looms large. After the crash, one pilot told investigators that a few months earlier he had seen the plane's first officer, Shanda Fanning, 37, with her head down on a table in a ready room, and she had said that she was exhausted; another pilot said the first officer seemed to be "zoning out" during the cruise portion of a flight.