Third Time Unlucky

For 19 months and 131 million miles, Boeing's 727 won nothing but praise from pilots, passengers and airlines. The first American-made medium-range jet --and the first three-engine airliner the U.S. has built since the famed Ford Trimotor--it handles easily, skims like a swallow in and out of small airports, and until last August had logged an exceptional record for reliability.

Then, approaching Chicago on a clear night, a United Airlines 727 from New York plunged into Lake Michigan, taking with it all 30 passengers and crew. Last week two more 727s crashed on approaches to airports at Cincinnati and Salt Lake City, taking 99 lives.

American's Flight 383 from New York was approaching Cincinnati from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. In a heavy rain squall, the pilot momentarily lost sight of the ground as he turned to line up with the runway. A wingtip snagged a nearby slope, slamming the plane down with such force that wreckage was strewn over a 400-sq. yd. area. Though local residents pulled four trapped passengers to safety, 58 others died in the flames.

Coming into Salt Lake City Airport, United's Flight 227 pancaked heavily on asphalt 200 feet short of the concrete runway, zigzagged down the field out of control and burst into flames.

A woman passenger forced open an emergency door, and, after diving headfirst onto the wing, dropped to the ground. Others followed; 50, including the entire crew of six, survived--three without a scratch. Forty-one others in the rear of the plane died--many as they pushed in panic toward the exits.

Three threads connect the three dis asters. Each of the fatal flights originated from La Guardia Airport. All were approaching airports. And all three 727s crashed at night. Neither the Federal Aviation Agency, which alone has the authority to ground airplanes, nor the airlines, which have 195 of them in service, has detected any structural flaws in the 727, the most thoroughly tested airliner in U.S. history. Early analyses of the Cincinnati and Salt Lake crashes indicate possible pilot error; the Chicago disaster is still a mystery (the plane's flight recorder has not yet been recovered from Lake Michigan). So that the 727 can land on short fields, engineers have given it a unique wing design. Unless the pilot flies it by the book, he can misjudge his rate of descent, fall short of the runway. One possibility that federal detectives plan to investigate is that the airlines have given inadequate training to pilots assigned to fly the fast-selling plane.

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