ValuJet Flight 592

ValuJet Airlines Flight 592

Accident
Date	May 11, 1996
Summary	In-flight fire
Site	Florida Everglades
Aircraft type	McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32
Operator	ValuJet Airlines
Registration	N904VJ
Flight origin	Miami International Airport
Destination	William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport
Passengers	105
Crew	5
Fatalities	110 (all)

ValuJet Flight 592 was a flight that crashed on May 11, 1996 en route from Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida, United States, to William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. The crash and its aftermath destroyed the credibility of the low-cost carrier ValuJet Airlines, forcing it to merge with AirTran Airways and take the smaller airline's name.

Accident

The 27-year-old DC-9 aircraft used on this route was previously owned by Delta Air Lines. Flight 592 pushed back from gate G2 in Miami after a delay of 1 hour and 4 minutes due to mechanical problems. At 2:04 pm, the DC-9 took off from runway 9L and began a normal climb. However, at 2:10 p.m. the flight crew noted an electrical problem. Seconds later, a flight attendant entered the cockpit and advised the flight crew of the fire. Passengers' shouts of "fire, fire, fire" were recorded on the plane's cockpit voice recorder when the cockpit door was opened. Though the ValuJet flight attendant manual stated that the cockpit door should not be opened when smoke or other harmful gases may be present in the cabin, the intercom was disabled, and there was no other way to inform the pilots of what was happening. By this time, the plane's interior was completely on fire.

The crew immediately asked air traffic control for a return to Miami due to smoke in the cockpit and cabin. Captain Candi Kubeck and First Officer Richard Hazen were given instructions for a return to the airport. One minute later, the First Officer requested the nearest available airport.

Flight 592 disappeared from radar at 2:14 p.m. and crashed in Browns Farm Wildlife Management area in the Everglades, a few miles west of Miami, at speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour (800 km/h). Kubeck, Hazen, the three flight attendants, and all 105 passengers aboard were killed. Recovery of the aircraft and victims was made extremely difficult due to the location of the crash. The nearest road of any kind was more than a quarter mile (400 m) away from the crash scene, and the location of the crash itself was a deep-water swamp with a bedrock base. The DC-9 shattered on impact with the bedrock, leaving very few large portions of the plane intact. Sawgrass, alligators, and risk of bacterial infection from cuts plagued searchers involved in the recovery effort.

Victims

Residences of passengers:	Passengers	Crew	Total
Bahamas	2	0	2
United Kingdom	2	0	2
United States	99	5	104
Unspecified	2	0	2
Total	105	5	110

Notable passengers killed on the flight included:

• San Diego Chargers running back Rodney Culver
• Songwriter and musician Walter Hyatt
• Del-Marie Walker, murder suspect
• Former Miami Hurricanes football offensive lineman Robert Woodus

The oldest person aboard the jet was 84-year-old Conway Hamilton of Miami, and the youngest was 5-year-old Clark McNitt of Powder Springs, Georgia. Another passenger, Tabitha Leonard, of Cloverdale, Indiana, died a week before her 13th birthday on May 18, 1996.

The majority of the passengers were from Georgia and Florida, however there were passengers from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Tennessee on the flight as well. There was also a woman bound for Massachusetts and a man from Texas on Flight 592.

COPS happened to be taping with the Miami-Dade Police Department when the accident occurred. As a result, one of the episodes aired in the 1996-97 season features some of the first 911 calls and the initial investigations into the accident.

Investigation

The NTSB investigation eventually determined that the fire that downed Flight 592 began in a cargo compartment below the passenger cabin. The cargo compartment's fire suppression created a no-air recycling environment, so a standard fire would have simply run out of air and burned itself out. However, the NTSB determined that just before takeoff, expired chemical oxygen generators were placed in the cargo compartment in five boxes marked COMAT (Company-owned material) by ValuJet's maintenance contractor, SabreTech, in contravention of FAA regulations forbidding the transport of hazardous materials in aircraft cargo holds. Failure to cover the firing pins for the generators with the prescribed plastic caps made an accidental activation much more likely. As the Seconds From Disaster episode about the crash explains, rather than fitting firing pins on the canisters, the SabreTech workers just duct taped the cords around the cans, or cut them, and used tape to stick the ends down. It is also possible that the cylindrical, tennis ball can-sized generators were loaded onboard in the mistaken belief that they were just canisters. SabreTech employees indicated on the cargo manifest that the "canisters" were empty, when in fact they were not.

The man believed to be responsible for the presence of the canisters aboard the aircraft is Mauro Valenzuela. He is wanted to this day by the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Conspiracy and Making False Statements as well as violating the Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety Act. According to CID, Valenzuela, a mechanic employed by SabreTech, certified that the canisters on a Valujet flight different than Flight 592 had been properly removed and replaced. These canisters removed from the Valujet flight were the canisters found in the cargo hold on Flight 592. Mauro Valenzuela fled the country soon after his arraignment and his current whereabouts are unkown. He remains on the Fugitive List of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Chemical oxygen generators, when activated, produce oxygen. As a byproduct of the exothermic chemical reaction, they also produce a great quantity of heat. These two together were sufficient not only to start an accidental fire, but also produce the extra oxygen needed to keep the fire burning, made much worse by the presence of combustible aircraft wheels in the hold. NTSB investigators theorized that when the plane experienced a slight jolt while taxiing on the runway, an oxygen canister activated, producing oxygen and heat. Laboratory testing showed that canisters of the same type could heat nearby materials up to 500 °F (260 °C), enough to ignite a smouldering fire. The oxygen from the generators fed the resulting fire in the cargo hold. A pop and jolt heard on the cockpit voice recording and correlated with a brief and dramatic spike in the altimeter reading in the flight data recording were attributed to the sudden cabin pressure change caused by a semi-inflated aircraft wheel in the cargo hold exploding in the fire. (Two main tires and wheels and a nose tire and wheel were also included in the COMAT).

In 1986, an American Trans Air McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 was destroyed by a fire at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, caused by an improperly stored oxygen generator.

In 1988, American Airlines flight 132 (a McDonnell-Douglas MD-80, the successor airplane to the DC-9) had a similar accident. A cargo hold fire caused by hazardous materials started, but the crew landed the aircraft safely. After this incident, the NTSB recommended to the FAA that all class D cargo holds have smoke detectors and/or fire suppression systems.

Smoke detectors in the cargo holds can alert the flight crew of a fire long before the problem becomes apparent in the cabin, and a fire suppression system buys valuable time to land the plane safely. In February 1998, the FAA issued revised standards requiring all Class D cargo holds be converted to Class C or E by early 2001.

Culpability

The NTSB report split blame for the crash among three parties:

• on SabreTech, for improperly packaging and storing hazardous materials,
• on ValuJet, for not supervising SabreTech, and
• on the FAA, for not mandating smoke detection and fire suppression systems in cargo holds.

In 1997, a federal grand jury charged SabreTech with mishandling hazardous materials, failing to train its employees on proper handling of hazardous materials, conspiracy and making false statements. SabreTech's maintenance supervisor, Daniel Gonzalez, and two mechanics who worked on the plane, Eugene Florence and Mauro Valenzuela, were charged with conspiracy and making false statements. Two years later, having been found guilty on the mishandling hazardous materials and improper training charges, SabreTech was fined $2 million and ordered to pay $9 million in restitution. Gonzalez and Florence were acquitted on all charges, while Valenzuela failed to appear and was indicted in absentia for contempt of court. Valenzuela is still missing as of 2010; he was specifically highlighted in the FDA's announcement of a Website to search for "environmental fugitives."

In 2001, United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the SabreTech guilty verdict in part. In so doing, the panel concluded that federal law at the time of the crash could not support a conviction for mishandling hazardous materials and that the government did not prove that SabreTech intended to cause harm. The panel did, however, uphold the conviction for improper training, and on remand, the District Court sentenced SabreTech to a $500,000 fine, three years' probation and no restitution.

Just before the federal trial, a Florida grand jury indicted SabreTech on 110 counts of manslaughter and 110 counts of third-degree murder; one for each person who died in the crash. SabreTech settled the state charges by agreeing to plead no contest to a state charge of mishandling hazardous waste and donating $500,000 to an aviation safety group and a Miami-Dade County charity.

SabreTech was the first American aviation company to be criminally prosecuted for its role in an American airline crash. The company, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Sabreliner Corporation, went out of business in 1999.

ValuJet was grounded by the FAA on June 16, 1996. It was allowed to resume flying again on September 30, but never recovered from the crash. In 1997, it merged with AirTran Airways. The ValuJet name was so tarnished by this time that it decided to take the AirTran name.

Many families of the Flight 592 victims were outraged that ValuJet was not prosecuted, given ValuJet's poor safety record. ValuJet's accident rate was not only one of the highest in the low-fare sector, but was 14 times higher than the major airlines. In the aftermath of the accident, an internal FAA memo surfaced questioning whether ValuJet should have been allowed to stay in the air. The victims' families also point to statements made by ValuJet officials immediately after the crash that appeared to indicate ValuJet knew the generators were on the plane, and in fact had ordered them returned to Atlanta rather than properly disposed.

A National Geographic Seconds From Disaster episode covered the crash.

Everglades memorial

Memorial

A memorial to the victims located in the Everglades was dedicated in 1999 on the third anniversary of the accident. The memorial, consisting of 110 concrete pillars, is located just north of Tamiami Trail about 11 miles west of Krome Avenue in Miami-Dade County and points to the location of the actual crash site eight miles to the north.

See also

• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - Another airliner crash in the Florida Everglades

External links

• Photo of the plane after being retired by Delta and bought by Valujet
• Photo of the plane while in service with Valujet
• Passenger list and gallery
• ValuJet Flight 592 Memorial
• Flight 592 special report (CNN)
• NTSB brief report
• NTSB full report (PDF)
• Audio transcript of the Air Traffic Control conversations
• Death in the Everglades, TIME
• Valujet: The Crash of Flight 592, CNN
• Valujet 592's Last Flight," The New York Times
• Contractor Found Guilty in Trial on ValuJet Crash
• The Lessons of Valujet 592, William Langewiesche (from The Atlantic, March 1998).
• Flight From Reality: The ValuJet Cover-Up - Michael Fumento