Plane Not Equipped With Required ELT

In its Probable Cause report on the November 27, 2004 loss of a CASA 212 turboprop in Afghanistan, the National Transportation Safety Board said that lax oversight of private companies contracted by the Defense Department to fly military missions contributed to the crash that claimed the lives of six people.

USA Today reports that to reduce costs and free up equipment for use on other missions, the Defense Department has increasingly relied on private companies to carry troops and cargo in Iraq and Afghanistan. The accident flight was operated by Presidential Airways, a Florida-based subsidiary of Blackwater USA, a private firm that provides security for private operators in war zones.

The NTSB says it is "concerned that the unique risks presented by operations in remote overseas locations have not been adequately addressed for civilian contractors that provide air transportation services to the US military."

The report states the pilots of the transport plane were flying over a remote region of Afghanistan, when they entered a box canyon ringed with peaks as high as 16,500 feet. The plane impacted terrain at 14,650 feet, and investigators say it appeared the plane was trying to climb out of the canyon.

According to the NTSB, the pilots had not used oxygen, which is required by the military when flying over 10,000 feet for long periods. The agency also took the company to task for failing to require crews to fly specific routes; according to CVR transcripts, the pilots chose an indirect, and nonstandard, route to their destination of Farah.

Most significantly, the Board also found the plane was equipped with an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) operating on 121.5 Mhz. Military aircraft are required to have upgraded 406 Mhz ELTs, which are monitored by satellite and can provide faster response times by rescuers.

Search crews did not locate the wreckage until nearly 24 hours after the crash.

A Defense Department spokesman said the Pentagon will review the Board's findings. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Blackwater, told USA Today the NTSB report "fails to understand the realities of operations in a war zone."

FMI: Read The Full NTSB Report