Cargo plane lands safely despite hydraulic line break
     Ashville, NC (September 22, 1997 08:45 a.m. EDT) - A C-130 cargo
 plane carrying Air National Guard soldiers landed safely Sunday des-
 pite a hydraulic line break that splashed fluid on some troops and
 left the pilot without the use of wing flaps.
     At least five of the 45 soldiers were treated for exposure to
 the fluid after Sunday's landing. The hydraulic fluid can cause
 pneumonia if inhaled and can cause burns if left on the skin too
 long.
     The pilot "had no flaps which are used to assist him in slowing
 down, so it took every bit of the runway to get the plane stopped,"
 Asheville Regional Airport public safety Sgt. C. Jeff Augram said.
     The plane was carrying members of the National Guard's 130th
 Signal Battalion, a military police unit. The soldiers had been on
 an annual two-week training mission in Panama.
     Dozens of emergency workers and vehicles lined the 8,000-foot
 runway, ready to act if the plane crashed, and worried family mem-
 bers watched from the terminal.
 09-22-97 0829 EDT
 -----------------
           Aircraft stand down begins
 Langley AFB, VA - September 22, 1997 - 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410 GMT)
     About 1,000 Air Force training flights were grounded Monday as
 part of an air safety review following a series of military plane
 crashes, some of them fatal.
     The stand down involves combat aircraft under the control of
 the Air Combat Command headquartered at Langley Air Force Base in
 Virginia. Only aircraft that had been scheduled for training activ-
 ity Monday were affected.
     Safety reviews for the rest of the Air Force fleet, including
 transport and cargo planes under the Air Mobility Command, will be
 held on Friday. The Navy, Marine Corps and Army also will conduct
 their own one-day stand down later this week.
     The Air Force officer in charge of safety procedures at Langley
 told CNN the review -- ordered by Defense Secretary William Cohen -
 - will be a time of reflection.
     "We will step back from our normal, heavy pace of exercise and
 training operations to reflect on what's happened during the past
 year with mishaps and try improve the safety of our operation by
 reviewing our processes and procedures," Col. Turk Marshall said in
 a live interview.
     The stand downs come after six military planes crashed in one-
 week period, killing 16 service members.
     Four of the planes were from the Air Force or the Air National
 Guard.
     The entire stand down originally was scheduled for Friday, but
 was moved up for some flights after the most recent crash. An Air
 Force B-1B bomber went down in Montana on Friday, killing all four
 crew members.
     Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said there doesn't appear to
 be any pattern in the six crashes.
 ----------------------------------
  Cuban exile group claims Cuban MiG pursued two of its planes
     MIAMI (September 22, 1997 5:39 p.m. EDT)  Brothers to the Rescue
 said Monday it may have faced a second confrontation with Cuban war-
 planes this weekend, 19 months after Cuban MiGs shot down two planes
 flown by members of the Miami-based exile group.
     A U.S. military official confirmed that at least one Cuban MiG
 warplane was sent up on Saturday to check on two Brothers to the
 Rescue aircraft that were in international airspace.
     Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, said the U.S.
 Federal Aviation Administration called the group's hangar on Satur-
 day while two of its planes were flying over the Straits of Florida,
 17 miles northwest of Havana.
     Brothers to the Rescue aircraft regularly fly over the waters
 that separate Cuba and Florida looking for small boats carrying
 Cubans to the United States. The group was founded to assist such
 refugees, known as rafters.
     "We received a call from the FAA at our hangar letting us know
 that there was radar scanning the area and they had seen the MiGs
 take off," Basulto told Reuters. "We contacted immediately our
 pilots there and they turned north to avoid any kind of contact."
     "Yes, the brothers did have a couple of planes in international
 airspace on Saturday and the Cubans sent up a MiG to check them out.
 But I don't have anything more than that on it," said a U.S.
 military official, who asked not to be identified.
     The official, who spoke to Reuters at the Pentagon, said the
 U.S. military regularly monitors the air space off Cuba using radar
 and other means.
     Basulto said the pilots did not see any MiGs.  But he said the
 U.S. State Department called him later on Saturday and confirmed the
 event. "The U.S. State Department called me and confirmed to me that
 they had seen the MiGS and that we had been in international air-
 space," he said.
     Four fliers from Brothers to the Rescue were killed on Feb. 24,
 1996, when Cuban MiGs shot down their two Cessnas. The incident
 raised tensions between Washington and Havana.
     Among other things, it forced President Bill Clinton to sign the
 Helms-Burton Act tightening the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which in turn
 dragged Washington into a trade dispute with Europe, Canada and
 Mexico.
     A State Department official on Monday said only that a Brothers
 to the Rescue plane moved about two miles north of Cuban airspace on
 Saturday, which corresponded to the flight plan that had been filed.
 ---------------+
--- DB 1.39/004487
---------------