Judge Absolves Weather Service of Blame in ’85 Delta Plane Crash That Killed 137

A federal judge, saying the crew was negligent for trying to land during a severe thunderstorm, on Friday absolved the National Weather Service and air traffic controllers of negligence in the 1985 crash of a Delta Air Lines jetliner.

In a 72-page opinion, U.S. District Judge David O. Belew Jr. said Delta “failed to prove that the United States of America was guilty of any negligence.”

In the longest major aviation trial in U.S. history, attorneys for Delta argued that the weather service was to blame for the crash at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport because crew members did not have sufficient warning about the severity of a thunderstorm at the airport.

The Lockheed L-1011, en route from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Dallas, crashed while trying to land on Aug. 2, 1985, when it was caught in a downburst of wind, killing 137 people.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation had blamed wind shear for the crash.

But in his ruling, Belew said the crew of Delta Flight 191 knew, or should have known, that there was severe weather on the approach to the airport, and that the thunderstorms were likely to cause dangerous wind shear, an abrupt change in wind direction and force.

Belew said that “attempting to land the aircraft in a thunderstorm constituted negligence on the part of the crew of DL-191, and proximately caused the crash.”

Although air traffic controllers failed to route the jet to another runway, the judge said that failure did not constitute negligence.

The airline had sought to make the government pay all or part of the millions of dollars in claims arising from the crash. The Atlanta-based airline said it would appeal the decision, noting that it was “in direct conflict with the recent jury verdict . . . in Ft. Lauderdale holding Delta blameless in all respects for the accident.”

Delta “continues to believe that the facts surrounding this case clearly establish total government responsibility for the tragic accident.”

The trial began in March, 1988, and lasted almost 14 months, although it recessed several times so Belew could clear backlogged criminal cases.

The government argued that the flight crew did not heed FAA tower warnings, did not ask for weather information and decided to fly into the storm. The government also said the jet’s radar should have warned the pilots of weather conditions.

Delta has paid at least $66 million in death, injury and damage claims from the Flight 191 crash, but in those cases survivors waived the issue of liability. In the only previous case that considered liability, a U.S. District Court jury in Ft. Lauderdale determined that Delta was blameless in the crash.