Pilots Told of Bad Weather, NTSB Says

Air traffic controllers gave the pilots of Flight 1420 detailed, regularly updated information about the dangerous weather in the moments before the American Airlines jetliner crashed here, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

NTSB investigators are attempting to determine why--despite being told that a gusty hailstorm was about to strike Little Rock National Airport--Capt. Richard Buschmann went ahead with his decision to land. Such decisions always are the responsibility of the pilot in command.

“Attempting to race a thunderstorm to an airport is like racing a locomotive to a grade crossing,” Jim Barnett, a former NTSB chairman now working as an aviation safety consultant, said Thursday. “Even if there’s a tie, you lose.”

As the Super MD-80 touched down late Tuesday night, it careened out of control, veering right and then left before skidding off the runway, smashing into a light standard and bursting into flames.

Nine of the 145 people on board died in the crash--among them Buschmann, a highly respected veteran pilot who had logged more than 9,000 hours in the cockpit. More than 80 other people were injured, including the co-pilot, First Officer Michael Origel, who suffered a broken leg.

Safety officials hope to interview Origel today.

Investigators theorize that the jetliner was struck by a powerful gust of wind--possibly as high as 87 mph--just as the plane touched down on the runway.

Sources close to the investigation said that skid marks found on the runway indicate the plane first touched down on the right-hand edge of the pavement. At this first point of contact, they said, the plane apparently was skewed slightly to the right rather than facing directly down the runway.

These two discoveries, the sources said, would be consistent with a powerful gust of wind from the left. That is what controllers had been warning the pilots about as the plane made its final approach following a flight from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The jetliner was lined up with the runway on a northeast compass heading of 40 degrees, and controllers repeatedly warned the plane about a storm cell approaching the airport from the northwest, with winds gusting at up to 55 mph.

The sources said the pilots also were warned about a couple of “wind-shear alerts” on the edge of the airport--radar warnings that gusts were blowing in divergent directions at some points on the airfield.

“The level of care was pretty good by the controllers,” George W. Black, the NTSB member heading the investigation, said Thursday. The pilots of Flight 1420, he said, “got even more [weather information] than you get at a busier airport.”

However, Black was quick to add, the cockpit crew was not told and had no way of knowing that the storm would produce winds as high as 87 mph. Those hurricane-force gusts did not occur until the plane was actually touching down, he said, and their exact speed was not computed until well after the accident.

NTSB investigators stressed that the weather conditions were changing rapidly in the minutes before the accident.

Buschmann initially was cleared to make a visual approach--without use of special navigational instruments. But when he found himself unable to see the ground, he requested an instrument approach.

Black said the plane’s “spoilers”--flat plates that normally flip up from the wings automatically on landing to negate the wings’ lifting power and help slow the aircraft--failed to deploy when Flight 1420 touched down. Whether there was a mechanical glitch or the pilots failed to use the devices properly had not been determined.

The plane’s two “thrust reversers”--clam-shell like devices on the engines that help slow an aircraft after landing--were found asymmetrically deployed in the wreckage. Whether they were a factor in the crash was not yet known.

Sometime today, survivors and relatives of the crash victims will be taken to a spot from which they can view the charred and tangled wreckage.

NTSB investigators will be charting the precise location of the debris before removing it from the bank of the Arkansas River, where it came to rest.

Black said other NTSB teams will be studying the runway pavement for possible abnormalities.

Experts in Washington have begun listening to the plane’s cockpit voice recorder. This recording, along with information from the plane’s other “black box,” the flight data recorder, is expected to provide important clues about the cause of the crash.