Pumps and Valves

Abstract

Captain John Cox was sitting in a Pittsburgh restaurant with a colleague from his union, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), when they learned that USAir Flight 427 had crashed. Cox was a USAir pilot who flew the 737, and he was an active member of his union’s aviation safety committee. He had been in town for an ALPA meeting with USAir. His dinner companion, also in Pittsburgh on union business, was Captain Bill Sorbie, chairman of his air safety committee. As well as dealing with ALPA flight safety issues, Sorbie also allocated pilots to take part in air crash investigations under the NTSB party system. Now he had a major accident right under his nose. Both men were stunned and incredulous. This was USAir’s fifth major accident in five years, and its second in 1994.