ValuJet Flight 592

ValuJet Airlines Flight 592

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

ValuJet Flight 592 was a domestic passenger flight between Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida, and William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia that crashed in the Everglades on Saturday, May 11, 1996, killing all 110 people on board.

Aircraft

The aircraft that crashed, a DC-9 was 27 years old and had been previously owned by Delta Air Lines. Its first flight was April 18, 1969. Delivery date was May 27, 1969.

Accident

On the afternoon of May 11, 1996, Flight 592 pushed back from gate G2 in Miami after a delay of 1 hour and 4 minutes due to mechanical problems. There were 105 passengers, mainly from Florida and Georgia, on board, as well as a crew of two pilots and three flight attendants, bringing the total number of people on board to 110. At 2:04 pm, 10 minutes before disaster, the DC-9 took off from runway 9L and began a normal climb. At 2:10 pm, 4 minutes before disaster, the flight crew noted an electrical problem and heard a banging noise on their headphones. Seconds later, a flight attendant entered the cockpit and advised the flight crew of a fire in the passenger cabin. 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 might 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 pm. The passengers and crew lost consciousness from the fire, and the plane began to dive, picking up speed. It rolled onto its side and crashed in the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area in the Everglades, a few miles west of Miami, at a speed in excess of 507 miles per hour (816 km/h). Kubeck, Hazen, the three flight attendants, and all 105 passengers aboard were killed instantly. Recovery of the aircraft and victims was made extremely difficult by 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 4-year-old Daniel Darbor of Atlanta.

The majority of the passengers were from Georgia and Florida; there were also passengers from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Indiana, and Tennessee on the flight. 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 was of a Class D design, in which fire suppression is accomplished by sealing off the hold from outside air. Any fire in such an airtight compartment will in theory quickly exhaust all available oxygen and then burn itself out. As the fire suppression is accomplished without any intervention by the crew, such holds are not equipped with smoke detectors. 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. Rather than covering the firing pins, the SabreTech workers simply 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 on board in the mistaken belief that they were just empty canisters, thus being certified as safe to transport in an aircraft cargo compartment. SabreTech employees indicated on the cargo manifest that the "canisters" were empty, when in fact they were not.

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 to produce enough oxygen to keep the fire burning. The fire risk was made much worse by the presence of combustible aircraft wheels in the hold. Two main tires and wheels and a nose tire and wheel were also included in the COMAT. NTSB investigators theorized that when the plane experienced a slight jolt while taxiing on the runway, an oxygen generator 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 without any need for outside air, defeating the airtight fire suppression design. 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.

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 to be converted by early 2001 to Class C or E; these types of holds have additional fire detection and suppression equipment.

Culpability

The NTSB report placed responsibility for the accident on three parties:

• SabreTech, for improperly packaging and storing hazardous materials,
• ValuJet, for not supervising SabreTech, and
• 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 in 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 a fugitive as of 2011; he was specifically highlighted in the EPA's announcement of a Website to search for "environmental fugitives."

In 2001, the 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 to donate $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, the company merged with AirTran Airways. Although ValuJet was the nominal survivor, the ValuJet name was so tarnished by this time that it was scrapped in favor of the AirTran name.

Many families of the Flight 592 victims were outraged that ValuJet was not prosecuted, given the airline's poor safety record. ValuJet's accident rate was not only one of the highest in the low-fare sector, but 14 times higher than those of 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 the company knew the generators were on the plane, and in fact had ordered them returned to Atlanta rather than properly disposed of in Miami.

Three National Geographic shows, Why Planes Crash (Fire In The Sky), Seconds From Disaster (Florida Air Swamp Crash), and Mayday (Mysterious Cargo), covered the crash.

Memorial

Everglades memorial

On the third anniversary of the accident in 1999, a memorial was dedicated to the victims in the Everglades. The memorial, consisting of 110 concrete pillars, is located just north of Tamiami Trail at 25°45′42.613″N 80°40′19.308″W about 11.9 miles west of Krome Avenue in Miami-Dade County and points to the location of the crash site eight miles to the north.

The memorial was designed by students at University of Miami in conjunction with the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS). Project coordination was provided by the International Masonry Institute and the memorial was constructed in large part by the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craft Workers, Local 1 with materials donated by local suppliers. The 110 pillars represent the lives of those who perished in the crash.

Previous similar incidents

In 1986, an American Trans Air McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 being serviced at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was destroyed by a fire caused by an 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 fire began in the cargo hold, caused by hazardous materials (primarily hydrogen peroxide), 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.

See also

• List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 - Another airliner crash in the Florida Everglades, the crash site of which is only a couple of miles from that of Flight 592.

External links

• [2]
• 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)
• Valenzuela's post on US EPA's Fugitive Site
• 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. November 19, 1996.
• Bragg, Rick. "Contractor Found Guilty in Trial on ValuJet Crash." The New York Times. December 7, 1999.
• Langewiesche, William "The Lessons of Valujet 592." The Atlantic. March 1998. Langewiesche presents a case that the ValuJet crash is an example of a "system accident," including the overly formal labeling and safety information on the oxygen 'canisters' (which actually were oxygen generators).
• Memorial location on Google Maps