I really didnt want to hear about flow being the reason youre calling us, he said to the dispatcher, Cause Im concerned about overflying suitable airports., Well we want to do whats safe, said the dispatcher, so if thats what you feel is safe we just want to make sure you have all the info., The pilots asked for information on the runway conditions in San Francisco, and the dispatcher temporarily signed off to go find some. Japan Air Lines Flight 350 was a domestic flight flown by a McDonnell Douglas DC-8-61, registered as JA8061, from Fukuoka Airport in Fukuoka to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Pilots Thompson and Tansky disconnected the autopilot to see what they were up against, and found that the stabilizer had jammed slightly nose down, requiring constant force on the elevators to overcome it and continue climbing. You mean, use this again? Tansky asked, presumably pointing at the trim switches. The MD-83 nosed over, rolled inverted, tumbled downward and impacted the Pacific Ocean at 4:21 pm Pacific Time. The park's playground was named "Rachel's Playground", in memory of six-year-old Rachel Pearson, who was on board the MD-83[18] and who was often seen playing at the park. Performing maintenance less frequently saved on labor costs and kept the planes in the air longer, thus increasing revenue. Meanwhile, N963AS continued to fly, and maintenance workers continued to grease the jackscrew every eight months. Alaska Airlines Flight 261 - Wikipedia The scenes in this video are from the documentary series Air Crash Investigation.None of them belong to me.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Fl. That plane just started to do a big, huge plunge, said one pilot. At 16:09, he said, Im gonna click it off. The FAAs special inspection report noted that the position of Director of Maintenance had gone unfilled since 1998; the Director of Operations position was empty; the Director of Safety was also the Director of Quality Control and the Director of Training and didnt report to high-level management; there was no maintenance training curriculum; on-the-job training was completely unstructured; the procedures in use didnt match those outlined in the maintenance manual; planes had been released from C-checks with paperwork incomplete; perishable and consumable materials had expired; shift turnover paperwork was missing, unsigned, or incomplete; work cards were not filled out properly; and more the list went on and on. The aircraft designers assumed that at least one set of threads would always be present to carry the loads placed on it; therefore, the effects of catastrophic failure of this system were not considered, and no "fail-safe" provisions were needed. We are at twenty three seven, request, uh, Thompson said to the controller. Finally, the Safety Board also felt that there were lessons to be learned from the actions of the pilots. "For that and for your loss . Im thinking, can it get any worse, but it probably can, he continued. It was my job to find out. The acme nut was still attached but its threads were missing! Flying Inverted | Cutting Corners | Alaska Airlines Flight 261 | 4K TheFlightChannel 1.43M subscribers 1.7M views 4 years ago Find out why this Alaska Airlines MD-83 crashed into the. The pilots, 53-year-old Captain Ted Thompson and 57-year-old First Officer Bill Tansky, could not have known that they were about to play out the final chapter in a sordid story that had been building toward its conclusion for years. You got it?. Did it happen went in reverse? Tansky asked. The leading edge of the stabilizer can be raised or lowered as it pivots about a rear hinge point. Both the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew (also referred to as "acme screw") and the corresponding acme nut, through which the jackscrew turns, were found. Like its earlier DC-9 variant, longitudinal trim control for the MD-80 is provided by the 40-foot-wide horizontal stabilizer mounted atop a vertical fin in a T-tail configuration. Technical logs fell through the cracks; critical forms were left incomplete; paperwork was outright falsified to show work done when it was not. We have a jammed stabilizer and were maintaining altitude with difficultyour intention is to land at Los Angeles, Thompson radioed to approach control. The trim might be, and then it might be uh, if somethings popped back there. how to print presenter notes in canva alaska airlines flight 261 pilot drunk. It was clear that nobody had survived the crash. In the case of extended lubrication intervals, the investigation could not determine what information, if any, was presented by Alaska Airlines to the FAA prior to 1996. This tail surface is a critical flight control because it provides a constant aerodynamic balancing force and also aids in controlling the airplanes nose-up and down movement when commanded by the pilots (see graphics 1 & 2). The thread failure was caused by excessive wear resulting from Alaska Airlines' insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly." The data indicated that the airplane climbed normally until 23,400 feet, where the horizontal stabilizer trim system stopped moving, the autopilot disconnected and the climb rate slowed. In interviews with the Alaska Airlines mechanic at SFO, who last performed the lubrication, the task was shown to take about one hour, whereas the aircraft manufacturer estimated the task should take four hours. More importantly, investigators felt that the pilots should not have attempted to troubleshoot the problem after exhausting the procedures in the checklist, considering that they didnt know the extent of the damage. The seemingly simple task of greasing the jackscrew was not immune to this degradation of the maintenance environment. The tests also simulated the acme nut wear process by using blocks milled from a scrap acme nut and rings turned from a jackscrew forging. The crash of AS261 became a part of the federal investigation against Alaska Airlines, because, in 1997, Liotine had recommended that the jackscrew and gimbal nut of the accident aircraft be replaced, but had been overruled by another supervisor. Ameet Prasad lost his younger brother . The NTSB determined that the design of "the horizontal stabilizer jackscrew assembly did not account for the loss of the acme nut threads as a catastrophic single-point failure mode". Alaska Airlines Flight 261 ATC Recording - YouTube It was the first sign that something was in fact gravely wrong with their airplane. It might be mechanical damage too. As any good crew should do, Thompson and Tansky then pulled out the checklists for a runaway or inoperative stabilizer. I went tab down, right, and it should have come back. National Geographic Documentary Japan Airlines Flight 123 & Air Disaster . If you are experiencing any difficulties processing your subscription or want to renew an existing subscription, please call Paula Calderon on +44 (0) 204 534 3914 or email her via pcalderon@aerospace-media.com. The Safety Board found that this unsafe inspection interval was only approved indirectly by the FAA. Brand new season of Air Crash Investigation, Mondays at 8pm, only on National Geographic UK The UK home of National Geographic. However, Alaska Airlines maintenance personnel often did it in as little as one hour not because they found a more efficient way, but because they didnt understand the proper procedure and skipped some of the steps. In July 1996, the criteria was changed to 8 calendar months which equated to 2,550 flight hours. This movement occurs via an electrical motor that turns a two-foot-long steel jackscrew through an aluminum-bronze acme nut held fixed within the vertical fin. The names of each of the victims are engraved on individual bronze plates mounted on the perimeter of the dial. Less than one second later, Alaska Airlines flight 261 slammed into the Pacific Ocean, obliterating the aircraft and instantly killing all 88 people on board.