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FAA Refuses to Act of 15-Year-Old Request to Update Manuals on Flying Low on Fuel.
Dec. 24--When an Avianca Airlines plane ran out of fuel and crashed on Long Island in 1990, killing 73, a government board moved to ensure such a tragedy would not reoccur.
The National Transportation Safety Board, seeking to improve flight manuals to help pilots low on fuel, turned to the agency with the power to order change: The Federal Aviation Administration.
The request was denied.
A decade later, planes continue to fall because of fuel failures, and the FAA has yet to adopt the request.
"We feel that the procedures that are in place . . . if they follow that they will never have a problem," Jim Ballough, director of the FAA's Flight Standards Service, said recently.
Yet The Miami Herald found fuel failure in one of every 10 nonfatal U.S. cargo accidents since 2000.
Thirteen years after the Avianca crash, the NTSB safety push resurfaced when a twin-engine cargo plane ditched into the Mississippi River in 2003 after running out of fuel while carrying 155 bags of seat covers, seriously injuring the pilot and copilot for Grand Aire Express.
