This wasn't a good day to give up sniffing glue
Glue fumes lead to plane emergency:
The pilot of a FedEx plane declared an emergency Thursday morning as he was approaching University Park Airport, reporting that he had fumes in the cockpit and hazardous materials on board. The plane landed safely and the pilot, who was not identified, was not hurt.
The pilot first reported the problem to air traffic controllers in New York, when his small cargo plane was 20 to 30 minutes away from University Park Airport, said airport Associate Director Ed Foster. The county was notified at 8:05 a.m., when the plane was 15 minutes out.
The airport responded at Level 3, its highest level, because of the presence of hazardous materials -- a paint inhibitor used in mixing paint and a strong glue for human bones used in medical procedures. The bone glue was the source of the fumes, Foster said.
Firefighters, police and other emergency personnel -- including Penn State's hazardous materials crew -- responded to the airport. Emergency responders reported lingering fumes in the plane.
Foster said a parcel of up to two cubic feet in size contained 10 to 12 boxes of the bone cement, but one box was not sealed tightly so that fumes were able to escape.
He said the Cessna 208B -- a fixed-wing, single-engine plane registered to Federal Express in Memphis, Tenn. -- was directed to a spot on an old and unused runway to be checked out.
FedEx spokeswoman Sally Davenport said the feeder plane -- which FedEx uses to get to small airports -- departed from Pittsburgh early Thursday morning bound for Johnstown Airport, but bad weather in Johnstown-Cambria County forced it to divert to University Park Airport.
She said the pilot, whom she said she could not identify, followed standard operating procedures by declaring an emergency upon detecting fumes in the cockpit. She said the pilot is employed by Wiggins Airways.
A spokeswoman for Wiggins, a New Hampshire-based company that operates a fleet of feeder airplanes for FedEx, refused to identify the pilot and said the company would have no comment.
Davenport said it is the shipper's responsibility to ensure hazardous materials are packaged safely. She said FedEx will investigate the parcel packaging. She refused to identify the shipper.
County Administrator Tim Boyde said the emergency response did reveal a small glitch: Although the airport never closed, emergency response vehicles traveled across the operating runway on the assumption that it was closed.
"We realize that's something that needs to be incorporated into the training" for emergency responders, Boyde said.