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FAA Issued Airworthiness Directive on Plane 12 Days Before Crash

Report: FAA Issued Airworthiness Directive on Plane 12 Days Before Crash

By KFBB News Team

Story Created: Mar 24, 2009 at 12:07 PM MST

Story Updated: Mar 24, 2009 at 8:14 PM MST

Just 12 days before the fatal crash of a Pilatus PC-12 killed 14 people in Butte, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive on the plane, requiring that a safety inspection be performed to check for a problem that could reduce the effectiveness of the plane's controls.

The directive is not effective until March 30th, at which date the owner would be required to do the inspection within 150 flight hours.

Prior to the FAA directive, the plane's manufacturer sent out a service bulletin in January and the European Aviation Safety Agency issued its own directive in late February.

The NTSB investigation will very likely examine whether or not the plane's owners had already complied with this directive. The NTSB has requested all the maintenance records of this plane, but has not yet commented if the plane was already inspected for the stick-pusher problem mentioned in the directive.

Tuesday afternoon, NTSB officials had their last news conference in Butte. They say the investigation is still in its early stages and investigators won't confirm or discount any theories.

Investigators were set to remove all of the wreckage from the cemetery in Butte by Tuesday evening. That wreckage will now be examined inside a hangar in Bozeman.

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