My grandparents around the time of their wedding
Steve Forbes introduces his monthly article in his namesake magazine with a quote that says, “With all thy getting, get understanding.” For pilots, we strive to understand everything we can about flying. Whether it’s the characteristics of our planes, the weather forecast, or our own personal limitations or minimums, continual process improvement is important to avoiding costly mistakes. When something goes wrong on a flight, recognizing the fault, diagnosing the problem, and developing a plan must all occur very quickly. In two accidents on the same day in 1972, two experienced Eastern Airlines pilots failed to correctly assess their situations while landing, and the results were disastrous. One of those Eastern Airlines pilots was my grandfather.
On December 29, 1972, I was six weeks shy of my fourth birthday when my grandfather, my great aunt, and two of their friends died in a plane crash near Marfa in far west Texas. My grandfather was the pilot of N9867, a Beechcraft Queen Air 65-80, ferrying his friends and my great aunt to a New Year’s Eve party at a ranch in Kent, Texas. My grandmother was ill and did not make the flight. At the time of the accident, my grandfather was fifty-eight years old, a full-time Senior Captain for Eastern Airlines, and had amassed more than 28,000 flight hours. Despite hours of online research about the accident, the only official mention of the crash is the NTSB report, totaling about seven lines. Apparently, the crash occurred on the base to final leg with the probable cause listed as “Pilot in Command – Failed to obtain/maintain flying speed.” The report also states, “Fire after impact” and “Aircraft apparently turning from base leg to final approach. Was in clean configuration.” At the time of the accident, my grandfather had approximately 80 hours of flight time in the Queen Air. A newspaper article quoted Jeff Davis County Sheriff Wilbur Medley saying that “winds were gusting up to sixty miles per hour in the area when the pilot sought to land.”
While researching my grandfather’s crash, I discovered an amazing coincidence. On the same day and only about four hours earlier, another seasoned Eastern Airlines pilot crashed an L-1011 into the Everglades just west of Miami. This crash is billed as the first crash of a jumbo jet in the modern era. In the Captain’s seat was Eastern pilot Robert Albin “Bob” Ross, who had more than thirty years’ experience as a captain with the airline and 29,700 total hours. He had 280 hours in the L-1011.
In the L-1011 accident, the Eastern Airlines flight from New York to Miami was uneventful until the plane was on final approach into Miami. When the pilot deployed the landing gear, the crew noticed an anomaly. The nose gear indicating light did not illuminate, suggesting that the nose gear was not in the down and fixed position. The Crew, consisting of Captain Ross, a co-pilot, an engineer, and an off-duty Eastern Airlines engineer, all worked to determine the problem while air traffic control instructed the plane to fly west at 2,000 feet and enter a holding pattern. Eventually, the crew determined that the malfunction was nothing more than a burnt bulb in the indicator and requested to return to the Miami airport.
Amazingly, all four crew members failed to notice that while they were diagnosing the landing gear problem, the plane was slowly descending towards the Everglades. By the time the error was noticed, it was too late, and the plane crashed, claiming 101 lives. The NTSB later determined pilot error as the cause of the crash, stating that the flight crew failed “to monitor the flight instruments during the final four minutes of flight and to detect unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew’s attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed.”
How is it possible that two commercial captains with more than sixty years combined experience and 57,700 total flight hours (plus three additional crew members in the L-1011) met the same fate on the same day? Both of these accidents were easily preventable, but all of the crew members were faced with distractions during a critical phase of flight and missed the opportunity to make a correction. For my grandfather, if winds were indeed gusting to sixty miles per hour, he could have easily turned back or diverted. For the L-1011 crew, they remained so distracted by fixing a minor bulb problem that no one thought to check their instruments to confirm level flight at 2000 feet.
With my grandfather’s accident, there is almost no public information available. I can only piece together information I heard as a kid and make assumptions about what really happened. My father did not like talking about the accident, but he was convinced that either my grandfather had a medical episode causing the crash or something mechanical went wrong with the plane. In the years since earning my own wings, I have often thought about the circumstances of the crash and concluded that my dad’s opinions were derived through bias. My dad and grandfather often flew together, and my grandfather was my dad’s CFII. While I cannot count out some other anomaly with the plane or my grandfather’s health, I don’t think this was anything other than bad decision-making. Certainly, the Queen Air was an underpowered plane for a big twin, but the circumstances reek of the classic stall/spin in base to final at slow speed. Add in the wind component, the fact that he was landing on a ranch strip, and his probable desire to get to his friend’s party, and the result was almost a foregone conclusion.
The newspaper articles on the crash add a detail absent from the NTSB report. The article states that the “plane hit short of the runway and burned.” If he was turning base to final, why was the plane in the clean configuration with the landing gear and flaps up? Was he waiting until the last minute to configure the plane because of the high winds, or was he distracted by the conditions such that he forgot all of the above? There is so little data about the crash that I can only form my own opinions about what happened. My opinion is that, regardless of his wealth of experience, his 28,000 hours as a commercial captain and his years of flying warbirds in airshows, he should have understood that landing with wind gusts of 60 miles per hour was unwise. He could have turned back to San Antonio or diverted to a nearby field, but he chose instead to try and put it down on the ranch strip.
In both accidents, the pilots failed to do the fundamentals when faced with adverse conditions. They failed to understand their situation, consider all of the relevant information, and act accordingly. There are a number of accident reports from both inexperienced pilots and those with thousands of hours getting themselves into preventable situations. I readily admit – I have done it. I have made mistakes flying that could have been disastrous, but for the grace of God were not. I think all pilots would admit the same.
One such event occurred on a recent flight this spring to Reno, Nevada, with my wife and son. Leaving Pueblo, Colorado, for the second leg of the trip, we climbed to altitude and began the 3.5-hour trip to Reno. The enroute portion of the flight was uneventful. However, as we approached Reno, I dialed up the ASOS and received the weather reporting winds 230 at 26 and gusting to 38. Commercial planes needing the longer runways, 35L and 35R, were being diverted because of the heavy crosswind. I was offered runway 26 by the controller and accepted the visual approach, landing behind a King Air in front of me. With the wind blowing straight down the runway, I ignored the real complexity of landing in such conditions. I was also bolstered by the King Air landing in front of me. I’m sure the thought of “If he can do it, so can I” ran through my head.
This was my first landing in Reno, and I did not anticipate the turbulence coming over the mountains into runway 26, nor the workload required to combat the wind. My logbook entry sums it up: “worst landing ever, coming over the mountains was very rough and turbulent.” In retrospect, I should have diverted to another airport with better conditions. Why didn’t I take in the information at hand and divert to a more suitable field? Probably because it was the end of a 3.5-hour flight, we had an appointment the next morning for my son’s school, and we had a rental car waiting at the FBO. All illegitimate reasons for poor decision-making on my part, and classic conditions for just wanting to get there.
I finished up my annual recurrent training in San Antonio, Texas, at the end of September. I often bemoan having to take a few days annually to do the training, but ultimately, I walk away from it with renewed understanding of best practices and safety procedures. Each year, during the oral portion or recurrent training, my instructor asks something like “anything over the past year you want to discuss?” I actually like doing the exercises and discussing mistakes I’ve made with my instructor. The conversation is a little like confession – you tell the story, get scolded, and then absolution through Instruction. When I admitted the Reno story to my instructor, I got back just what I deserved. I had already learned my lesson, but his reminder was welcome.
Both the L-1011 and the Queen Air accidents remind us of the importance of not being distracted during the critical phases of flight and compartmentalizing information. For my grandfather, my guess is that he just wanted to get on the ground and celebrate New Year’s with his friends and family. To that end, he ignored the winds and weather, and his result was disastrous. In retrospect, the same could have been true of my Reno flight. I ignored the dangerous winds, and it is only because of a little luck that my result was different than my grandfather’s.
For the L-1011 crew, we know from the NTSB report and recorded radio communications that the chaos in the cockpit led to the crew missing or ignoring the critical data showing they were descending. They were also probably exhausted by the circumstances and just wanted to be on the ground after fumbling through the landing gear failure.
Don’t let distractions, the urge to get on the ground, or some other unimportant event be the end of your flying days. Instead, take Steve Forbes’ words to heart and “understand” the exact circumstance of your situation and make an informed decision on how you proceed. Your family will happily hug you when you get home – even if you are late.
