Looking For Answers
Searching for Clues in the Alaska Air Crash

Feb. 1, 2000 - Rescuers continue to scour the waters off Los Angeles where Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashed, looking for a miracle. Although they are recovering bodies from the water, officials also say they have not yet given up hope for survivors. Aviation analyst John J. Nance joined us with an update on the crash investigation.

Moderator at 5:45pm ET
Welcome John J. Nance. Let's begin.

Debra from proxy.aol.com at 5:46pm ET
Is losing your horizontal stabilizer a scenario that pilots typically encounter in simulator training?

John J. Nance at 5:48pm ET
Not losing the whole stabilizer, but losing control of the stabilizer trim - the ability to move the big stabilizer up or down - is something that we practice regularly. In fact, it should be a fairly easy situation as long as the problem is recognized early enough. By that, I mean that one of the worst situations you can get into with the stabilizer trim is what we call a runaway - the trim system decides on its own to run toward the full nose-up, or full nose-down, position. If that happens, there are plenty of warnings in the cockpit that should enable you to disconnect the power driving the trim system before the mistrimmed becomes a serious flight control problem.

Bill Sabo from sj.redshift.com at 5:49pm ET
Can the elec stab trim on an MD83 be overridden and controlled manually?

John J. Nance at 5:51pm ET
Absolutely, it can. First of all, it is a simple flick of the switch that disconnects the electric portion of the trim system, and there are two handles on the center console, normally called the suitcase handles, which will manually position the hydraulic valves to the nose-up or nose-down position, thus repositioning or correcting whatever the electrical system did wrong. In some airplanes, such as the Boeing 747, you can manually crank the trim in either direction with a large wheel on the center pedestal in the cockpit.

Bob Mitchell at 5:51pm ET
Is there a reason why flight 261 did not divert to Pt Mugu NAS rather than LAX?

John J. Nance at 5:54pm ET
There is really no way at this stage to know what the crew was using as their criteria for deciding which airport to use for emergency diversion. But, any of us would first think of the nearest large airport that our airline normally uses because of the presence of maintenance and long runways. On the face of it, LAX was the most logical diversion point for a crew that did not believe they had a catastrophic emergency. On top of that, point Mugu, or the shorter runways at Santa Barbara, would have been not only less appropriate, but very inappropriate for this kind of emergency. Had the crew been able to stabilize the flight, they would more than likely have had to consider using Edwards Airforce Base, because of the ten mile runway on the dry lake bed and the possibility of having to land at a much higher than normal air speed.

Shelly from 015.popsite.net at 5:55pm ET
How common is it for a pilot to continue on to their planned destination after an indicator light has come on.

John J. Nance at 5:56pm ET
It all depends on what light is involved, and on the professional assessment of the pilots. Any possibility that the flight could be endangered in any way by continuing on, immediately dictates that the captain select the most suitable airport closest to him or her for diversion. You simply don't have any latitude of choice, when for instance, an engine fails (an extremely rare occurrence), and certainly not with a substantive flight control problem.

Moderator at 6:00pm ET
For more information on this story click here.

Kent from gtbindians.com at 6:13pm ET
Is it possible that from the time the problem was discovered that LAX was too far away to make an emergency landing?

John J. Nance at 6:15pm ET
It appears from what we think we know right now (and everything at this stage is conjecture), that the crew was extraordinarily close to LAX and that, if control had been maintainable, the 40-mile distance would have been traversed very rapidly. You can imagine how much more difficult the decision to divert would have been if they were halfway up the Baja Peninsula with almost nowhere to go. It is an additional tragic dimension to this accident that they were so close and couldn't maintain control long enough to get there.

Moderator at 6:15pm ET
Have we learned anything new from the NTSB briefings today?

John J. Nance at 6:18pm ET
The NTSB really has very little substantive information to give in the first press briefing after an accident, and usually information on communications between the accident aircraft and air traffic control, and preliminary radar track information, are the only early facts that they can give. You have to remember also that it is against the nature of the NTSB to say anything to anyone, least of all the media, about an accident investigation until the final report is issued. Fortunately, over the years, the board has realized that their public duties include releasing factual information as quickly and liberally as possible, and this particular NTSB has been rather good about that.

Moderator at 6:18pm ET
How close are the search teams to recovering the black boxes?

John J. Nance at 6:19pm ET
This will be a race in time to get the proper deep diving equipment to the scene and find the boxes before the pingers run out of battery power in 30 days. In the case of TWA 800, the water depth was approximately 120 feet, which is reachable by normal scuba diving. A 700-foot depth, however, creates many more serious difficulties and is out of range of scuba diving.

Brian - San Francisco from home.net at 6:20pm ET
A lot of attention has been focused on the elevator trim in this incident. Is it possible that this was caused by an electrical problem? I remember reading that some aircraft built around this time used a type of wiring whose insulation was prone to arcing.

John J. Nance at 6:23pm ET
That's a very good question, and one that will be carefully looked at by the NTSB investigators because, in the unlikely event that a wiring problem or other electrical problem created an uncommanded movement of the stabilizer trim (called runaway pitch trim), it is certainly possible for the trim system to be significantly mispositioned before the pilots discover it and can react with emergency procedures which involve disconnecting the electrical part of the trim system. In this case, that is simply one of many hundreds of possibilities, and what might be a probability and what isn't, we just can't tell.

Joe from wordandbrown.com at 6:23pm ET
How many air crashes are there going to be before there is some sort of limit on pilot fatigue, as well as maintenance on the planes that they fly?

John J. Nance at 6:26pm ET
First of all, at this early point I see virtually no indication that pilot fatigue or crew duty time will become a significant factor in this accident. However, speaking generically, we still have a long way to go in commercial aviation to appropriately limit, in both small, regional carriers, and globe-girdling international carriers, the amount of time pilots can remain on the job. While we've come a long way in improving crew duty time limitations in the last 15 years, the massive economic pressure of deregulation, to constantly do more with less, generically retards the willingness of the industry to embrace changes which are at once more conservative, and more expensive.

Noel from microsoft.com at 6:26pm ET
There was about five minutes of radio silence between the last communication and the plane falling off radar. It was similar with the Egypt Air crash and Swiss Air crash. Why wasn't one of the pilots giving regular updates to controllers on what they were seeing and what they were trying to do?

John J. Nance at 6:29pm ET
When you're faced, as a pilot, with an emergency situation, even someone trained as a broadcaster and communicator like me, is going to pay full attention to the job at hand, of correcting the problem and stabilizing the aircraft - not narrating the process. While it is true that airline pilots need to, as a group, be quicker on the draw to inform their passengers of delays, diversions, and problems, these two pilots were obviously seriously engaged in doing precisely what they should have been doing: trying to fly the aircraft. Especially considering the ultimate tragic result, talking excessively, or even consistently to the controllers would have meant a diversion of their thinking at a critical moment. After all, despite their best intentions, the controller can't reach up and fly your airplane or drag you to safety.

Debra from proxy.aol.com at 6:29pm ET
To your knowledge, is this the first crash involving the horizontal stabilizer?

John J. Nance at 6:31pm ET
To the best of my knowledge, without having had time to research it, that would be a correct statement. In fact, I am unaware of any make or model of modern jet airliner having been lost to a massive flight control malfunction centered around or involving the stabilizer or stabilizer trim system. Even if I am wrong about this being unprecedented, there is certainly no question that this is so rare has to be a first time occurrence in all other respects.

Joan at 6:32pm ET
Do you think there could have been earlier warning that the aircraft was in dire trouble? Could not the voice contact have been maintained so that air traffic controller could hear the conversation and the steps taken to try and rectify the situation. Would this not lead to a better understanding of what may have happened?

John J. Nance at 6:32pm ET
That's what the cockpit voice recorder is for. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think all of us when flying as passengers would rather the crew spend their time solving the problem versus documenting it.

Mac from dialup.mindspring.com at 6:32pm ET
Between this and the Swiss Air crash should we be concerned with the MD- series aircraft?

John J. Nance at 6:35pm ET
The crash of Swissair 111 and the loss of our Alaska jet yesterday are wholly dissimilar in terms of the preliminary information we have currently. Although the final accident report on Swissair has not been issued, clearly one of the major causal factors involves smoke, and perhaps fire, in the cockpit. No such situation has yet been indicated in the loss of Alaska 261, for that matter, there has been no indication of suspected flight control problems in Swissair. Consequently, to draw any conclusion or presumption that the MD series of aircraft is less trustworthy than others has no validity.

Moderator at 6:36pm ET
Thank you John J. Nance for joining us again.

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