OTHER VOICES/FRED CHESBRO

AFTER GROUNDING EMERY Worldwide Airlines on Aug. 13, the Federal Aviation Administration basked in headlines such as "Emery bows to the FAA." The FAA represented itself as being bold and decisive, reining in a carrier brazenly out of compliance.

But, alas, it was just a fairy tale.

On Feb. 16, 2000, Emery Flight 17, a DC-8, took off on a flight from Sacramento to Dayton. Two minutes later, the massive jet plowed into a salvage yard. None of the crew members escaped the ensuing inferno.

Thirty months earlier, Fine Air 101 (another DC-8 cargo jet), out of Miami, similarly wiped out its entire air crew. The National Transportation Safety Board bashed the FAA and found the cause was "the failure of the FAA to ensure that known cargo-related deficiencies were corrected."

Safety groups and families of the crews pushed for public hearings on the Emery accident, and the NTSB announced that official hearings would take place in August in Washington (they did not occur) and would center on contract maintenance and oversight by "airline and FAA personnel."

Recall, these were the identical issues for which the NTSB blasted the FAA in the aftermath of ValuJet's 1996 crash.

Media reports show that the FAA anticipated criticism at the Emery hearings. One recent report referred to the FAA's failure in the ValuJet accident and quoted NTSB member John Goglia as saying the Emery 17 accident "has a number of similarities to ValuJet," and "we went through this drill already. Why are we back here again?"

The FAA ignored pleas by Emery's own air crews in the months leading up to Emery Flight 17's crash. These requests placed FAA officials squarely on notice and provided ample evidence that without involvement from regulators, a catastrophic event such as Emery Flight 17 was inevitable.

In a 1998 letter to the FAA, Capt. Tom Rachford, speaking for the Emery pilots' union, wrote, "Our maintenance has dramatically fallen off. ... I can't say it any clearer: This airline is going to put a hole in the ground and kill someone. Please don't let this fall upon deaf ears."

Just five months before the fatal crash, Rachford pleaded yet again with the FAA. He wrote: "EWA is out of the regulator's eye. ... Why are the authorities continuing to turn a blind eye? The lower echelon of the regulatory agencies have substantiated our concerns. ... However, it is the upper echelon that appears to be dragging its feet. ... If we have an accident in the near future, the subsequent investigation will show sainthood on the part of ValuJet when compared to Emery Worldwide Airlines. ... Emery crews are living on borrowed time."

The timing of the FAA's grounding of Emery is scandalous. The record shows, and is supported even by the FAA's own inspections prior to February 2000, that regulatory enforcement action should have occurred years ago, before the Emery Flight 17 accident.

Having missed the opportunity to act prior to the Emery Flight 17 accident, the FAA conveniently waited to ground the airline until nine days before the scheduled start of a public hearing that would have cast the FAA in a very unfavorable light.

Moreover, by waiting until just before the hearing, the FAA derailed the hearing, averted the impending public criticism and avoided being chastised once again for failing to enforce its own directives.

According to news reports, "Both the FAA and EWA say the sudden grounding is the result of what inspectors found during the past 18 months, not because of any new findings." The FAA had cause to ground EWA much earlier than a mere nine days prior to the start of the hearing.

The timing by the FAA is contrived. Instead of the FAA getting rave reviews for its tough handling of Emery Worldwide Airlines, the FAA should have had its back up against the wall answering questions at the NTSB hearing about why it didn't close down Emery before Flight 17 crashed 18 months ago.

The FAA has told its "fairy tale" with perfect timing. For now, it avoided answering why it dropped the ball by ignoring deficiencies that predated a tragic crash. Its actions are an affront to the memory of the crew of Emery Flight 17.

My brother-in-law, the captain of Emery Flight 17, and his crew deserved so much more. The FAA and the NTSB owe an accounting.

Fred Chesbro is a military pilot living in Springfield, Va.