Flight 965 American Airlines

The flight American Airlines 965 was a flight between the International airport of Miami in Florida and the international airport Alfonso Bonilla Aragón of Cali in Colombia. The Boeing 757 which ensured this flight is crushed against a mountain with Buga in Colombia the December 20th 1995 whereas it had begun its approach on Cali. Of the 155 passengers and 8 team members, only 4 passengers survived. It was the first air crash implying a Boeing 757.

Following a Colombian attack of the guerilla in 1992, the air-traffic controllers of Cali did not lay out any more a radar to manage the approach of the planes on their airport, those being done only on the instruments radios and the system of approach of the track. The approach of the airport of Cali were done by several beacons radios to guide the pilots through the mountains and of the valleys which surround the city. The management system of flight of the aircraft of American Airlines had already these well informed beacons and had, in theory to say exactly to the pilot or to turn, go down or go up, all the way to approach and be posed in Cali.

As the weather was fine and the clear night, the controller of Cali asked the pilots rather if they wished to make a direct approach towards track 19, than to have to circumvent the airport to land on track 21. The pilots accepted, thus hoping to save time, their departure of Miami due to traffic, having been delayed 2 a.m. Badly interpreting the word " directe" , they erased the points of the way of approach programmed on the trip computer. When the controller asked the pilots to announce to him when the plane would be with the top of the beacon of Tuluá, in the north of Cali, the latter was not programmed any more in the computer, also the pilots had they to leave their charts paper to locate it. In same time, they had left the Spoiler S to slow down the plane and to accelerate its descent. This last being too high and too rapid for the new track envisaged.

At the time when they put in perspective Tuluá, they had already exceeded it. In answer to that, they tried to reprogram the navigation system on the following beacon, that of Rozo identified to R on their list. But Colombia had duplicated the identifier for the Romeo beacon, located it close to Bogotá and trip computer lists it did not refer by the Rozo beacon like " R" , but only by its complete name " ROZO". If a country authorizes the duplication of identifiers, they are often listed with the identifier of the most important city in first. By taking the first " R" list, the commander trained the autopilot to take the direction of Bogota of which to make make with the plane a broad turn in half-circle to take the direction of the North-East whereas the plane moved towards the south. At the time when the pilots realized there, the plane did not fly over any more the valley of approach towards Cali, but crossed another about parallel valley, extending in the North-South direction. But the pilots without the knowledge had put the plane on a trajectory of collision with a mountain of 3000 meters.

Last nine seconds before the impact, the system warning signal of proximity of the ground started, announcing a collision with the ground imminent. The commander and his second immediately tried to make take again altitude with the plane, but the left spoilers reduced the angle of rise and the plane ran up against the mountain close to its top. The investigation showed that the plane would have probably passed to the top of the mountain if the pilots had returned the spoilers immediately when the alarm of proximity of ground started

American Airlines settled numerous lawsuits brought against it by the families off the victims off the accident. American Airlines filed has " third party complaint" lawsuit for contribution against Jeppesen and Honeywell, who made the navigation computer database and failed to include the coordinates off Rozo under to identify " R" ; the box went off to trial in United States District Short for the Southern District Florida in Miami. At the trial American admitted that it boron summons legal responsibility for the accident. Honeywell and Jeppesen each contended that they had legal No responsibility for the accident. In June 2000, the jury found that Jeppesen was 17% At fault for the crash landing, Honeywell was 8% At fault, and American Airlines was 75% At fault.

Cali' S old approach system and lack off radar cuts both been blamed. Many piles cuts also blamed the lack off has Flight engineer in modern cockpits, which places has greater workload one the two piles in face. Many blamed the piles for not studying the Cali approach before attempting to Land there. Boeing has been blamed for not equipping its spoilers to automatically retract when the aircraft accelerates.

The Flight road designation off the Miami to Cali road is now Flight 921. Rozo NDB " R" has been replaced by Palma NDB "PL". -->

The helps were started 1/2 hour later, when inhabitants of a village reported an explosion in the mountain. But the night and the difficulty to locate then to reach the site of the crash landing returned the organization of the difficult helps. A helicopter of the Colombian army located the wreck the next morning and could help 2 passengers but the fog arrived and suspended the helps airborne. The rescue party to foot arrived on the site and had to evacuate one of wounded by the jungle.

Inquire and causes of the accident

The survey was carried out by the Aeronautica Civil (Colombian civil aviation), with the assistance of the National Transportation Safety Board , American NTSB and the contribution of third like the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration , Allied Pilots Association , American Airlines , Boeing and Rolls-Royce.

Given Civil Aeronautica his in September 1996 final report, which was distributed by the NTSB.

In this report/ratio, the Colombian authorities determined the following causes having probably caused the accident:

Failure of the crew to be planned in an adequate way and to carry out the approach on track 19 and inadequate use of the automatisms programmable of the apparatus.
Echec of the crew to stop his approach towards Cali whereas many signs alerted them that it was inavisé to continue it.
Absence of awakening of the situation by the crew concerning his vertical navigation and its proximity of the ground.
Echec of the crew has to return to a basic radio navigation at one time when the assistance of the management system of flight created a confusion and required an excessive work of loading of the data at the time of a critical phase of the vol.

In addition to these causes, the Aeronautica Civil determined worsening factors:

efforts of the crew to accelerate the approach and the landing to avoid additional delays.
execution of the operation of avoidance after the alarm of the GPWS with the left spoilers.
the logic of the management system of flight which erases all the intermediate points of posting in the event of execution of a direct road.
the navigationnelle information of the management system of flight which uses a convention of naming different from that published in the lists of navigation.