I had to wait as the priorities for recovery were the victims, the flight recorders, and then the tail. On January 31st, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 suddenly nosedived into the Pacific Ocean and the crash had deadly implications. 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. After the crash, we discovered that the work order had not been acted upon because a second inspection team had rechecked five times and found endplay to be within limits at .033.. Yeah, no, said Thompson. The stabilizer on the MD-80 series rests on top of the tail, and like all airliners, it can move up and down to adjust the pitch angle at which the plane is stable. The pilots decided that Los Angeles looked better. The Gulf of California stretched out below them, bright and blue. The airplane immediately began another dive except this time it did not recover. Uh, if you want to try it, thats ok with me, if not, thats fine. The block-on-ring test rigs were lubricated with grease where they made contact. This three-dimensional animated accident reconstruction shows the final pitch-over and initial portion of the dive for Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which cras. And while the airline did eventually settle the suits, it did so only after dragging the families through what many described as a legal hell in which Alaskas lawyers tried to downplay the monetary value of their deceased loved ones. At their cruising altitude and speed, the position of the jammed stabilizer required the pilots to pull on their yokes with about 10lbf (44N) of force to keep level. [42], Two victims were falsely named in paternity suits as the fathers of children in Guatemala in an attempt to gain insurance and settlement money. N963AS nearly made it anyway its next jackscrew inspection was scheduled for March 2000. I think the stab trim thing is broke, said Thompson. During the course of the investigation, and later in its final report, the NTSB issued 24 safety recommendations, covering maintenance, regulatory oversight, and aircraft design issues. An FAA inspector who reviewed the 1996 extension said that the airline presented only Boeings recently extended lube interval as justification. The original interval was 500 flight hours (graphic 12). At 16:09, he said, Im gonna click it off. The jackscrew requires an inspection procedure known as the end play check to monitor the wear of the acme nut threads without having to remove the jackscrew assembly from the airplane. The outcomes of wrongful death suits against Alaska filed by the victims families are unknown, but it has been reported that the airline eventually settled with the families out of court for a total of at least $300 million, all of which was covered by insurance. The plane dropped from about 31,500ft (9,600m) to between 23,000 and 24,000ft (7,000 and 7,300m) in around 80 seconds. [6], During this time, the flight crew had several discussions with the company dispatcher about whether to divert to LAX or continue on as planned to SFO. The partial shearing likely caused the stabilizer to jam during climbout from Mexico but then the nut threads let loose when the crew attempted to operate the trim again which released the jam and allowed the jackscrew to pull up through the acme nut all the way to its bottom stop nut. But the measurements were imprecise and repeated tests often produced different results allowing a certain amount of ambiguity as to whether the value was over or under the limit. With no grease at all, the rate of wear would increase by a factor of ten or more. However, during the 1990s the quality of maintenance at Alaska Airlines began to slip significantly.
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