Communication in any field is critical, but especially in aviation, because so many lives are at stake. Dave shares a story of a tragic, preventable event that led to many fatalities, due to careless communication.
“One tragedy that occurred in 1972 is Eastern Airlines Flight 401, an L 1011 white body jet. It deployed in New York City and it was a night flight. Everything went well until they were approaching the Miami International Airport for landing. When they lowered the landing gear, the flight deck crew, that's the pilot, the first officer, and the flight engineer, noticed that the left and right side landing gear lights illuminated, indicating that the left and right side landing gear were fully extended for landing as they should be.
“However, the nose landing gear light was not illuminated. This means that the nose landing gear may not be fully extended for the landing and may not be safe. They told the controller what their situation was and they climbed up to 2000 feet, as assigned by the controller, to troubleshoot the problem. They needed to determine if the nose landing gear light had just burned out, or if they actually had a problem with the nose landing gear.
“As they worked this problem, the autopilot was inadvertently disconnected somehow and the pilots did not realize that the airliner had begun a slow and imperceptible descent from it's assigned altitude. When it was going through about 900 feet, the air traffic control noticed it and said, ‘How are things coming along out there?’ Of course the flight crew assumed he was talking about the landing gear anomaly and the captain said, ‘Well, we'd like to turn back towards the airport.’ So they were sent back towards the airport.
“After a while, the first officer finally noticed that they were way off their altitude. He said, ‘Hey, what's our attitude? We're still a 2000 right?’ Right after that they impacted into the Florida Everglades swamp.
“The flight crew heard a different message than was meant by the controller I believe. All flight crew members were troubleshooting the landing gear problem and no one was monitoring the flight instruments, which would have included the altimeter.
“Like Jeff said, fly the airplane first. Aviate, navigate, and communicate. This was a tragedy with 101 fatalities and 75 survivors, all preventable.”
For more information, check out the Flight Talk episode "Communicate or Crash" on our front page or your favorite podcast platform.
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