MIAMI AIR LEASE

Two brushes with disaster

BY RONNIE GREENE

rgreene@MiamiHerald.com

MIAMI -- Twice, the pilot and copilot navigated the skies over Florida when their relic cargo planes began vibrating. Twice, they steered the hulking aircrafts to safe landing, avoiding high-rise condos the first time, landing without cockpit lights the second.

Miami Air Lease's two emergency landings are a telling chapter in the hazards of an industry where troubled planes take to the air in a rush to deliver goods.

After the first crash, U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Florida, urged the Federal Aviation Administration to process the company's request to get one of its aged planes back in the air -- only to have that plane make a fiery landing four months later.

When the 23-ton cargo plane's left engine began vibrating the first time -- Dec. 4, 2004 -- pilot Alejandro Bristol knew something was amiss.

The Convair 340, built in 1955, had just departed Opalocka Airport en route to the Bahamas, its belly full of computer supplies, PlayStations and holiday toys.

"I said, 'the airplane is coming down and we have to find a place to put it,' '' Bristol said, recounting how he turned to copilot Dennys Villavicencio.

"I told him, 'I hope we can make it,' '' Bristol said. "I immediately thought, 'If I try to make it to Opa-locka, I'm going to hit homes.' ... I could have crashed into a high-rise, into a house."

They searched for somewhere to bring the plane down even as it "started shaking more and more," Villavicencio said. "I never got scared, because I saw the lake."

Their target: Maule Lake in North Miami Beach, not far from the Aventura Mall and the dense condo canyon pocket of northeast Miami-Dade County.

Just before 9 a.m. that Saturday, the pilot and his partner passed over power lines and clipped trees, then brought the plane down, belly first, into the lake.

They know the outcome could have been grave.

"That's a big airplane. And it carries a lot of fuel," Bristol said. "All of that runs through your mind."

Painted in red across the plane's fuselage -- "EELECT GEORGE W. BUSH," with the ''R'' inadvertently missing, a sign of company president Evelio Alpizar's politics.

This past April the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that "improper maintenance of the left engine by company maintenance personnel'' triggered a sequence of events leading to the crash. It also said the operator and crew exceeded the maximum allowable takeoff weight.

COMPANY GROUNDED

With that plane down, Miami Air Lease had just one aircraft in its fleet, a recently purchased Convair 440 built in 1956. But the FAA had not approved it to fly.

On Aug. 18, 2005, Díaz-Balart wrote to FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey "on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Evelio Alpizar."

Miami Air Lease "has been unable to operate during the past nine months. Any assistance you can provide so that the final approval of the Miami Air Lease aircraft is processed in a timely manner will be greatly appreciated," Díaz-Balart wrote, with a cc to an FAA inspector involved.

"The letter was a standard congressional inquiry that we do on behalf of constituents," said chief of staff Ana Carbonell.

The FAA wrote Díaz-Balart back in September, saying Miami Air Lease had "a major problem producing acceptable manuals to operate their aircraft'' and that even though the manuals had been approved, the company had to show that its plane was ready.

Soon the plane flew again. An FAA spokesman said Díaz-Balart's letter "did not hasten the action."

On Dec. 13, Bristol and Villavicencio were again at the controls. The plane's tag: N41527, the same aircraft Díaz-Balart just wrote about.

At 1:30 a.m., as they flew with a pilot trainee on a cargo flight to Cincinnati, the No. 2 engine suddenly began to vibrate. They were ordered to land at the nearest airport in Vero Beach.

"The lights went out," Bristol said. "We couldn't see anything in the cockpit."

His copilot aimed a flashlight at the instrument panel so Bristol, just turning 30 and the father of a baby girl, could see.

"Being that I could not use my flaps because I had no power, I knew I was going to land at a higher land speed than normal," he later told the FAA. "When I landed, I had no brakes or hydraulic pressure, so I had to use my emergency airbrake system."

"...When we got close to the runway we veered to the right and skipped across the grass and stopped right before a grass ditch. When the airplane stopped, I noticed both sides of the airplane . on fire."

Afraid the grass would fuel the flames, Bristol tried to move the plane to safer ground but couldn't: "I noticed that the steering was broken," he told the FAA.

As the fire raged "out of my control'' on one side, Bristol and his colleagues escaped, and he dialed 911.

After two scares, he has no plan to change vocations. He said he just acquired his own cargo business: "Flying these airplanes is in my blood."

MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS

FAA inspection records, released to The Miami Herald under the Freedom of Information Act, detail "numerous discrepancies and violations'' of federal aviation regulations by Miami Air Lease since 2000.

Some inspections found maintenance upkeep "not being documented as required," along with a cracked wingtip, excessive oil leaks, loose rivets, hydraulic leaks, worn latches, frayed electrical conduits and incomplete documentation.

When the FAA turned out for a 2000 inspection, a former office manager "refused to provide any records and became belligerent, threatening and abusive," records say.

A July 2004 ramp inspection of the plane that would later crash near Aventura said advertising on the sides of the fuselage obstructed the required borders showing where to cut for emergency rescue.

To each issue, the company agreed to make corrections, and the FAA signed off.

After its latest incident, the FAA in January told Alpizar it had found issues of noncompliance involving the company's aircraft, records and procedures. Miami Air Lease is challenging the FAA's findings.

"We answered every single one of those charges," new maintenance coordinator Paul Richards said recently. "We are probably several weeks away from flying."