Controller Accepts The Blame

LOS ANGELES - In dramatic testimony yesterday, an air-traffic controller accepted blame for last February's fatal runway collision in Los Angeles, and the co-pilot of one plane told how his pilot died in the flaming wreckage.

It was the first public appearance by controller Robin Lee Wascher, 38, since the accident and the first time she acknowledged publicly that her mistake had led to the crash.

Federal investigators say that because of her confusion, Wascher positioned a Skywest commuter liner on the same Los Angeles International Airport runway on which she had just cleared a USAir Boeing 737 jetliner to land. The jetliner struck the commuter plane in a fiery explosion that killed 34.

Investigative records show Wascher believed initially that the jetliner had been destroyed by a bomb. She testified yesterday that a short time after the accident, she figured out that the USAir craft had struck the smaller Skywest commuter craft.

"I realized something went wrong," she said. "I went to the supervisor and I said, `This (the SkyWest plane) is what USAir hit.' "

Wascher testified on the second day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings to determine the factors that led to the twilight crash. The board's conclusions and recommendations are not expected for several months.

Speaking calmly in succinct, measured phrases, she described her confusion. She said she directed the SkyWest Metroliner onto the runway at a midpoint intersection, but she thought she was talking to the pilot of a Wings West Metroliner on a taxiway near the end of the runway.

This error positioned the SkyWest plane directly in the path of the landing jetliner. But Wascher said she had trouble seeing the SkyWest plane because bright lights atop a building in her line of sight cast a glare onto the control-tower windows.

The controller also said that in the moments before the accident, she lost radio contact with the Wings West plane.

Her testimony came after the jetliner's co-pilot told how he heard his pilot die in the crash.

"I heard two groans from Capt. (Colin F.) Shaw," David Kelly said. "I could not see him (because of smoke that filled the cockpit), but I heard two groans. I've never been around a person dying, but I'm positive that what I heard was his death at that moment."

Kelly, the only member of the two cockpit crews to survive the accident, said there had been "no indication of trouble" as his jetliner approached the airport for a landing.

In all, 22 of the 89 people on the jetliner died, along with all 12 aboard the SkyWest plane. Kelly suffered a ruptured tendon in his left knee, a slight separation of the pelvis and other, lesser injuries.

The NTSB said toxicological tests have revealed traces of the sedative phenobarbital in Shaw's system when he died, but pharmacologists say the concentrations were so low that they probably had no effect on his ability to fly the plane. Kelly said yesterday that the captain was "alert" and performed well before the crash.