FAA Lifts Delta Pilot’s Permit to Fly Jets

WASHINGTON —  The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday that it has revoked the flight certificate of the Delta Airlines pilot who pulled the wrong controls and sent a Boeing 767 into a near-disastrous dive moments after takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport.

In the emergency revocation order mailed to John Henry Gilfoil on Friday at his home in Los Altos, Calif., the FAA told the veteran pilot that his errors in the June 30 incident “demonstrated that you do not possess the qualifications necessary” to fly a commercial airliner.

The mishap was one of at least a dozen safety-related incidents involving the Atlanta-based airline that prompted the FAA to launch a systemwide investigation last month into Delta’s cockpit procedures and training methods.

The airline transport pilot certificate is required for a pilot to command a large transport jetliner.

The revocation of Gilfoil’s certificate is effective immediately and will remain in effect during any appeal proceedings that he can initiate before the National Transportation Safety Board. Gilfoil, 54, was not immediately available for comment.

The FAA said Gilfoil, reacting to an amber light warning him of a fuel-flow problem, pulled two round knobs cutting off fuel to the plane’s two engines instead of pushing square buttons two inches away that would have corrected the problem.

As the wide-body jetliner plummeted toward the Pacific, the flight crew warned terrified passengers to don life jackets and prepare for a crash.

The plane, carrying 194 passengers and a crew of eight on Delta’s Flight 810 to Cincinnati, plunged about 1,000 feet to an altitude of 500 feet in the minute it took Gilfoil to restart the engines and pull the jetliner out of the dive.

Flight 810 then continued on without incident to Cincinnati.

Following a brief, preliminary investigation of the incident, the co-pilot was exonerated and returned to flight duty. Gilfoil was suspended.

As a result of the Gilfoil incident, the FAA and Great Britain’s Civil Aviation authority have ordered airlines to install plastic guards over the cutoff knobs to prevent their being pulled by accident.