Alaska Airlines Flight 261: Part 1
On January 31, 2000, years of greed and negligence will come to rest on the stripped threads of a tiny acme nut in the 40-foot horizontal stabilizer of a modern airliner. But, first, PATHOS.
All right, so a little bit of an (unintentional) April Fools’—I am only posting Part 1 of this story today instead of the full story as originally planned. As I put the finishing touches on it today, I realized that I wanted to give a little more time and space to some of the aspects of the story. It’s important, and I think it makes a big difference.
Please enjoy Part 1, and make sure to subscribe and share. The rest will be posted tomorrow and/or Monday. Promise. It’s worth it.
Image: “Memorial sundial in Port Hueneme, California,” by Dcmcgov - Self-made, uploaded on English Wikipedia (en:Image:Sundial.jpg) by TCY, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2077290
JANUARY 30, 2000
2:25 pm PST
Alaska Airlines Layover Hotel outside of Puerto Vallarta, México
53-year-old Theodore “Ted” Thompson and 57-year-old William “Bill” Tansky, both pilots for Alaska Airlines, watch as the St. Louis Rams start Super Bowl XXXIV off on a high note by taking the opening kickoff and heading to the Tennessee Titans’ 17-yard line.
With an exciting game that ends up with a win for the Titans, anchored by a halftime show led by Christina Aguilera and Phil Collins, the first Super Bowl of the new millennium is immediately dubbed the “dot-com Super Bowl.” The talk around office water-coolers the next morning focuses on the featured ads, famously dot-com-heavy for the first time in history—including that of the ill-fated Pets.com, whose multimillion-dollar sock puppet ad will ultimately fail to keep the company afloat for even another year.
For the families of Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer Bill Tansky—and of the other eighty-six people who would board Alaska Airlines Flight 261 with them the next afternoon—any such memories of Super Bowl Y2K will be swiftly and devastatingly eclipsed, however, when years of greed and willful negligence come to rest on a the stripped threads of a tiny acme nut in the 40-foot horizontal stabilizer of a modern airliner.
Image: “Alaska Airlines MD-83 N963AS Santa Ana 15-09-92 Kodakchrome K25 slide scanned with Epson V850 Pro” by Frank Jäger - Alaska Airlines MD-83 N963AS, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108491610
JANUARY 31, 2000
12:39 PM PST.
Licenciado Gustavo Diaz Ordaz International Airport (PVR) in Puerto Vallarta, México.
A seven-and-a-half-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-83, tail number N963AS, owned and operated by Alaska Airlines, arrives at the Puerto Vallarta airport (PVR) for its flight to Seattle, Washington (SEA) with a planned stop in San Francisco, California (SFO) on the way. The inbound flight crew gets a chance to quickly shoot the shit and talk shop with the outbound flight crew before everyone heads their separate ways. They discuss weather and the aircraft. Nothing out of the ordinary to report.
The inbound captain later remembers that the accident crew seems “rested, relaxed…in good spirits.” The inbound first officer remembers much the same, adding that the accident captain, the experienced and well-liked Captain Thomas is “happy to see them,” and that the crew, including the similarly-experienced and admired First Officer Tansky seems “ready to go to work.”
1:37 PM PST
With eighty-three passengers, three cabin crew members, and the two pilots aboard, the MD-83 takes off from Puerto Vallarta and begins to climb towards its planned cruising altitude of 31,000 feet. Three minutes after takeoff, the autopilot engages as per usual around 6,200 feet of altitude. The airplane continues to gain speed and altitude as it climbs toward FL310.
1:49 PM PST
The airplane’s flight data recorder (FDR) records the last normal movement from the horizontal stabilizer, which mysteriously stops responding to any manual or automatic input as the airplane passes through 23,400 feet. Some time after disengaging the autopilot at 1:53 (at an altitude of 28,557 feet and an airspeed of 296 knots—or about 340 mph) and “some time before the beginning of the CVR transcript” two hours later at 3:49 PM, the pilots make their initial call reporting a possible problem to dispatch and maintenance control in Seattle. In those two hours, the pilots will have to use their own strength to maintain level flight in an airplane whose horizontal stabilizer appears to be jammed.
In their final accident report, the NTSB will note that having a longer cockpit voice recording and/or transcript available (rather than the thirty minutes available in this—and most—accidents) would have been particularly useful in this investigation.
Image: “DC-9 entered service with Delta Air Lines on December 8, 1965” by Unknown Author By Unknown author - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37652871
AUGUST 1, 1964
In 1964, the FAA certified the DC-9, manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company (later to merge with McDonnell to become McDonnell Douglas in 1967). It was a single-aisle, mid-range passenger aircraft meant to be a smaller counterpart to its successful older brother, Douglas’ own DC-8. The DC-9 was wildly successful, and it later evolved to become the slightly sleeker MD-80 series (including the MD-83 Captain Thompson and First Officer Tansky would fly on January 31, 2000), which nonetheless retained all of the DC-9’s core design features.
Image: “DC-9 family development: the early DC-9, subsequent MD-80, later MD-90 and the final Boeing 717” by Julien.scavini - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20906294
Speaking of design, it was distinctive and instantly iconic. Perhaps the most recognizable feature of the aircraft was its “T-tail,” which not only had numerous aerodynamic advantages but also just looked pretty cool. The T-tail was also, of course, a crucial part of the functionality of the aircraft. It made use of a fairly simple mechanical system called a “jackscrew assembly,” which essentially controlled the plane’s pitch (nose-up or nose-down) by threading a steel screw through an acme nut.
Image: “Figure 5” from National Transportation Safety Board. Aircraft Accident Report: Loss of Control and Impact with Pacific Ocean Alaska Airlines Flight 261 McDonnell Douglas MD-83, N963AS About 2.7 Miles North of Anacapa Island, California January 31, 2000. Section 1.6.1: Factual Information: Airplane Information: MD-80 Longitudinal Trim Control System Information. (NTSB/AAR-02/01 PB2002-910402). https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0201.pdf.
Such a system somewhat obviously required diligent maintenance. The DC-9’s original certification documents (including “Douglas Process Standard 3.17-49,” issued 8/1/1964) specified an ideal safety lubrication interval for the jackscrew assembly of 300-350 flight-hours. This meant that after each completion of 300-350 hours in flight, the assembly should be lubricated by qualified maintenance personnel.
Though employees at all levels of McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, and Alaska Airlines later struggled to find a straight party line on the time it took to finish such a lubrication of the jackscrew assembly, the average response seemed to be about two to four person-hours.
Image: “Relief location map of North America with significant locations marked for Alaska Airlines flight 261.” https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/North_America_laea_relief_location_map.jpg/640px-North_America_laea_relief_location_map.jpg
JANUARY 31, 2000
3:49 PM
Captain Thompson and First Officer Tansky re-engage the autopilot. Despite pushback from Alaska Airlines dispatch, the crew has decided to divert to Los Angeles International Airport after two hours of flying their crippled MD-83 manually. In order to maintain level flight, the two men have had to continuously apply between ten and fifty pounds of pressure to the controls since disengaging the autopilot shortly after takeoff.
The pilots are exhausted, anxious, and annoyed. As if their queasy situation isn’t bad enough, Alaska dispatch and maintenance have been little to no help. Dispatch in particular have been thoroughly unsympathetic to the worsening state of affairs, even not-so-subtly pressuring the pilots to try and continue on to San Francisco in order to avoid “flow” issues. The pilots, otherwise preternaturally calm and level-headed despite the increasingly dire circumstances, finally begin to express some frustration, albeit politely.
3:55 PM
“[It] just drives me nuts,” says Captain Thompson, “not that I wanna go on about it… you know I it just blows me away. . . they think we're gonna land, they're gonna fix it, now they're worried about the flow, I'm sorry this airplane's isn't gonna go anywhere for a while. . .so you know.”
A beat.
First Officer Tansky empathizes with his captain: “So, they’re trying to put the pressure on you.”
Less than a minute later, Seattle dispatch cuts back through on the radio: “Alaska two sixty one dispatch.”
“Dispatch Alaska two six one go ahead.”
Seattle continues: “Yeah, I called, uh, [San Francisco International Airport Automatic Terminal Information Service]—they're landing two eight right, two eight left and, uh, [I] wasn't able to get the the runway report but, uh, looking at past, uh, weather, it hasn't rained there in hours, so I'm looking at, uh, probably a dry runway.”
He’s pressuring them, again, to continue to San Francisco. Captain Thompson had earlier expressed discomfort with the idea of landing his disabled jet at the notoriously windy, rainy, and unpredictable San Francisco airport, where—oh yeah—there’s also currently a “direct crosswind.”
Captain Thompson, ever the gentleman, still keeps his cool: “I gotta tell you, when I look at it from a safety point I think that something that lowers my ground speed makes sense.”
Seattle dispatch seems to finally accede. He sounds maybe even a little sheepish. He advises the pilots to get in touch with LAX. They do. LAX informs them that they’ll begin preparing, but since they’re an international arrival, they’ll need to clear them through customs first.
No matter. They are just about 94 miles from LAX, and the more fuel they can burn off before landing, the better. They confirm with LAX.
It’s now just before 4:00 PM.
In twenty-two minutes, the two pilots and everyone on their plane will be dead.
Sources (So Far):
Boeing: History -- products. Wayback Machine. (n.d.). https://web.archive.org/web/20100207141221/http://boeing.com/history/mdc/dc-1.htm
Freeman, M. (2000, January 31). “Rams win Super Bowl thriller, as Titans fall a yard short.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/31/sports/superbowl-xxxiv-rams-win-super-bowl-thriller-as-titans-fall-a-yard-short.html
International Aviation Safety Association. (n.d.). “The Failsafe Jackscrew Design (safety through redundancy).” Safety Issues—FAA Inaction. http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/FAA_Inaction/fsjackscrew.html
National Transportation Safety Board. (n.d.). Loss of Control and Impact with Pacific Ocean Alaska Airlines Flight 261 McDonnell Douglas MD-83, N963AS About 2.7 Miles North of Anacapa Island, California January 31, 2000. NTSB Accident Report. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0201.pdf
“Profiles of Alaska flight 261 victims.” The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/profiles-of-alaska-flight-261-victims/
Super Bowl XXXIV - NFLGSIS.com. (n.d.). http://www.nflgsis.com/1999/Post/04/919/Gamebook.pdf
Ventura County Sheriff. (2023, February 7). Alaska Flight 261 After Action Report. Ventura County Sheriff's Office. Retrieved from https://www.venturasheriff.org/