For Want of a Cable . ..

To be sure, there are all those nuts and bolts. But they are put in place by humans--and more often than not, it is "the human element'' that causes air disasters. Last week came a chilling example: the Civil Aeronautics Board, after a 14-month investigation, blamed flagrantly faulty ground maintenance work for the crash of a Northwest Airlines Electra at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

More than two months before the fatal crash, the Electra had been sent to Northwest's Minneapolis shops for routine maintenance. Two mechanics removed a key aileron control, partly unscrewing a cable connection and removing safety wires in the process. Then, as their work shift went off, they left the job unfinished. Two other mechanics installed a new control--but failed to retighten the cable connection or refix the safety wires. As the Electra took off for Miami on the morning of Sept. 17, 1961, the cable finally worked loose. Thrown into a sharp right turn from which it could not recover, the aircraft sliced through power lines 60 ft. above the ground, cartwheeled across a railroad embankment and burst into flames.

Its painstaking investigation of the crash completed, the CAB issued a broad indictment of Northwest Airlines maintenance procedures. Not only had the maintenance work been careless, but it was not properly inspected when finished. ''The amount of supervision fell considerably short of meeting the safety minimums desired and expected in a task of this nature," said the CAB report, adding that both "maintenance and inspection personnel showed an ignorance or disregard of published instructions.''

Shortly after the CAB report, the Federal Aviation Agency announced that it had fined Northwest $3,000, and five of its employees $100 apiece. It seemed a rather low price for a crash that had cost 37 lives.

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