The Minister for Transport, Datuk Dr. Ling Liong Sik, should present a Ministerial statement in Parliament tomorrow on the safety of the Boeing 737s operated by MAS, and the measures taken by his Ministry and the Department of Civil Aviation, in view of US findings linking two plane crashes to potential flaw in Boeing 737 rudders.
The 737's rudder has been a focus of investigations into the still unexplained crashes of the Boeing aircraft in Colorado Springs in 1991 and in Pittsburgh in 1994. The USAir 737 crash September 8, 1994, near Pittsburg killed all 132 people aboard. The March 3, 1991, United Airlines crash in Colorado killed 25.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in an emergency order has made it mandatory for Boeing to carry out special inspections of Boeing 737s within ten days, following recommendations focusing on the 737’s rudder, made two weeks ago by the US National Transportation Safety Board.
Boeing had admitted in a service bulletin that its engineers, in conjunction with the National Transportation Safety Board, discovered the plane's rudder power control, which is similar to a power steering unit in an automobile, could jam when subjected to unusually extreme temperatures and advised airlines that all Boeing 737 jetliners, the world’s most widely-used passenger plane, be tested for potential safety problems in the rudder systems.
Boeing said that if the rudder power control unit had a jamming problem, known as a "hard over," the airplane could roll to one direction and possibly go out of control if the pilot reacted incorrectly or if the plane was too close to the ground.
As the majority of the MAS’ fleet of 95 jetliners are Boeing 737s, the Malaysian public are anxious to know whether all the MAS 737s would be subjected to a special examination of its rudders within 10 days, and how this special examination would be carried out.
(3/11/96)