Pilot in Colombia Crash Left Brakes On, Authorities Say

The pilot of an American Airlines plane that crashed in Colombia last week failed to release the brakes that had been applied in a pre-landing procedure as he gunned the plane’s engines and lifted its nose in an attempt to avoid plowing into a mountain, authorities said Thursday.

A statement from Colombia’s Civil Aviation Authority also said 167 people were believed to have been aboard American Airlines Flight 965 en route from Miami to the southwest Colombian city of Cali, and not 164 as previously reported.

Only four people survived the crash, which was the worst in Colombian history and the deadliest involving a U.S. carrier since 270 people were killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988.

The statement from the Civil Aviation Authority was based on information gleaned from the plane’s flight recorder, which has been examined by a team of U.S. and Colombian investigators in Washington.

The recorder documents the fact that alarms went off in the cockpit of the Boeing 757 moments before it crashed into the 12,000-foot mountain Dec. 20, about four minutes before it was scheduled to land in Cali.

Three alarms signaled that the plane was coming dangerously close to a landmass nine seconds before the crash, according to the statement.

Two seconds later, the pilot gunned the aircraft’s engines and pulled its nose up, but he failed to release the “speed brakes” applied earlier in preparation for landing.

The report did not say whether the pilot could have averted the accident if the brakes had been released or if that would have given him the power to skim over the mountain where the plane crashed and broke into pieces.