(narrator): A private charter jet
is flying 15 passengers
to Aspen, Colorado for a party.
- This flight really captured the public attention
because of the people onboard.
- Poor weather makes the landing a challenge
for the experienced pilots.
- Can you see out there at all yet?
- No.
- Aspen is considered one of the most dangerous
airports in the country.
- As the plane nears the runway,
the controller watches as disaster unfolds.
(grunting)
(passengers screaming)
- What are they doing?
(crash)
- Investigators examine
the Gulfstream's wreckage for answers.
- I don't see any issues here.
- When they learn about the passengers' behavior...
- We're running out of fuel here for the birthday boy!
- ...the moving parts of this mystery fall into place.
- That clearly had to put some pressure on the pilots to say,
alright, this is not looking good.
(man on radio): Mayday, mayday.
(theme music)
(automated voice): Pull up.
(indistinct radio chatter)
(narrator): The sun has just set over the Colorado mountains.
Avjet November 3-0-3 Golf Alpha
is nearing the end of its journey to Aspen.
- Well, there's the edge of the night there.
- Yeah.
- Captain Robert Frisbie has almost 10,000 flying hours
to his credit.
- What time is official sunset?
- He and First Officer Peter Kowalczyk
have been flying together for close to five months.
- 6:28.
- Both pilots have been with Avjet for less than a year.
The small charter airline
is based out of Burbank, California.
- Avjet catered to high rollers,
business people, people who could afford to charter a jet,
people who had to get there in a hurry, but do it in style.
- We're running out of fuel here for the birthday boy!
- A Miami financier chartered this flight
for 14 of his friends
to attend a birthday party at an exclusive venue in Aspen.
- This was a group of friends who seemed to have had
tremendous early achievements and accomplishments,
and they were really going to go places.
- So, forty-eight hundred pounds one-twenty-six?
- Wait. It was 50.
- You know what, I adjusted it, because the fuel was way off.
- The pilots are flying a Gulfstream III.
(engines roaring)
- The Gulfstream is a luxurious plane
that, you know people see in the movies
and people think high rollers and movie stars fly in,
but it's a workhorse plane.
It actually has a good reputation.
- It's a 90-minute flight from Los Angeles to Aspen.
- Gulfstream 3-0-3 Golf Alpha, Aspen,
reduce speed to two one zero or slower.
- The controller slows down the Gulfstream
to maintain a safe distance
from the other planes heading into Aspen.
- Two one zero or slower three Golf Alpha.
- 17 minutes from landing,
the pilots begin their descent.
Aspen Pitkin County Airport,
also known as Sardy Field,
is about three miles northwest of Aspen.
Landing on its single runway is a challenge.
- Aspen is considered one of the most dangerous
airports in the country.
The runway is not long
and it is in close proximity to high terrain on all sides.
- Hey, do you remember that crazy guy in the Lear
when we were in Aspen last time?
He was, "I can see the airport," but he couldn't see it.
(laughing)
Okay, set you up on the approach?
- Okay.
(narrator): The landing is made even more difficult
with the final stage needing to be carried out visually.
As the plane nears Aspen,
a beacon guides it to the airport,
but it doesn't lead it directly to the runway.
Once the airport is in sight,
the pilots must line up with the runway visually.
- Because of the high terrain and close proximity
to the final approach course,
the minimum altitude is a couple thousand feet
above the ground, and we must be visual
by that time to safely continue our descent down to a landing.
- And tonight, the weather isn't making landing any easier.
- If at any time it's snowing,
it's very hard to acquire that visual reference
to safely descend further to a landing.
- Residential noise restrictions around the airport
leave the pilots only nine minutes
until the landing curfew at 6:58.
The crew is cutting it close.
- Can you see out there at all yet?
- Uh...
No.
- Gulfstream three Golf Alpha, heading zero five zero.
(Frisbie over radio): Heading zero five zero,
three Golf Alpha.
(engines roaring)
(narrator): As the pilots prepare to line up
with the runway, passengers get ready for landing.
(indistinct chatter)
- Okay, synchronizers off.
- There is just enough fuel for one landing attempt.
After that, the pilots will have to divert to another airport.
- Okay, it's off.
- Hydraulic pressure's good.
- Gulfstream three Golf Alpha,
turn heading one four zero,
intercept final approach course,
maintain one six thousand.
- Eight minutes from the airport,
the Controller gives the crew clearance
to commence the approach.
- One four zero, one six thousand...
...intercept final approach course,
three Golf Alpha.
One six thousand.
(narrator): As the pilots get their final intercept
to the airport...
- Challenger seven Juliet alpha, you have the airport in sight?
- ...another aircraft also on approach to Aspen,
updates the controller.
(Challenger pilot): Ah, that's a negative. Going around.
(narrator): Those pilots abort their landing,
because they can't see the runway.
- Attention all aircraft, last aircraft went missed.
- What? - He went missed.
- He went missed?
Damn.
That's not good.
- If you can't successfully land the aircraft,
then a missed approach is a procedure
that pilots will execute to return to a safe altitude.
- As the Gulfstream gets closer to the airport,
the weather deteriorates.
(indistinct chatter)
- Gulfstream three Golf Alpha, five miles from Red Table,
cross Red Table at or above one four thousand,
clear V-O-R-D-M-E Charlie approach.
- The Controller clears the pilots
to begin the final approach 11 miles from the airport.
- You have to be configured properly at the right altitude,
at the right speed, otherwise you are expected
to execute a missed approach.
- Red Table at one four thousand,
cleared for V O R approach,
Gulfstream 3-0-3 Golf Alpha.
- Here we go.
- As the pilots get closer to the airport,
they're counting on the weather to improve for their landing.
- Descending to one four thousand.
- Problems can escalate very quickly
when flying into Aspen.
There's really no room to recover without breaking off
that approach or trying it again.
- Landing flaps.
- Just over two minutes from landing,
instruments have successfully guided the pilots
to the airport. Now it's up to them
to identify the runway.
- You see the runway?
- Gulfstream three Golf Alpha, you have the runway in sight?
- Oh. Affirmative. - Yeah, now we do.
- Yeah, runway in sight, three Golf Alpha.
(controller): Gulfstream three Golf Alpha visual, roger.
(automated voice): One thousand.
- One thousand to go.
(narrator): The pilots are now less than a minute from landing.
(beeping)
(indistinct chatter)
(automated voice): Two hundred.
(narrator): At the last moment, they realise something is wrong.
(engine revving) - No, oh! No. No. No. No!
(passengers screaming)
(tense music)
(grunting)
- Avjet 3-0-3 Golf Alpha
crashes just short of the runway at Aspen.
- Aircraft identification
Gulfstream 3-0-3 Golf Alpha,
aircraft location, it was north of the runway
approximately... the Shale Bluffs area.
(sirens wailing)
(narrator): Emergency vehicles rush to the scene
in the hope that there are survivors of the crash
of Avjet 3-0-3 Golf Alpha.
(tense music)
But all 18 people onboard are dead.
All 15 passengers, the two pilots,
and the flight attendant.
- This flight really captured the media
and the public attention because of the people onboard.
There were a lot of very young, talented people.
- Put everything from the tail section over there.
- By the following day, investigators are on site.
- Thousands of passengers fly charter airplanes
every year, encompassing 2.5 million flight hours
annually, so trying to understand
why this accident occurred was significant.
- Let me see that.
(narrator): Within hours, the plane's cockpit
voice recorder, or CVR,
is retrieved from the wreckage.
- Let's get the data pulled from that ASAP.
What about a flight data recorder?
Looks like there wasn't one.
Okay.
- Because the airplane was manufactured in 1980
and registered in 1981,
it was not required to have an FDR.
- While the CVR is sent for analysis,
Investigators from the National Transportation
Safety Board wonder why the pilots
weren't able to land safely.
- The plane crashed 24-hundred feet from the runway.
- When an aircraft crashes short of a runway,
especially a sophisticated airplane like a Gulfstream Jet,
a number of questions arise here:
How did they get there? What possible factors
could the crew have? Was there some sort of a failure
in the aircraft?
- Take a look at this.
What do you think caused that?
- There's a deep ground scar at the crash site.
- That would do it.
- Investigators conclude that it was formed
when the left wing hit the ground.
- When an airplane comes through trees
or vegetation as it approaches the ground,
it cuts off branches.
And we can look at those branches
and the angles that are made
to understand the airplane's attitude
as it came into the ground and its descent profile.
- Left wing struck the trees at about...
49 degrees.
- That's a hell of a bank.
(engines roaring)
- There is no operationally relevant reason
for an airplane to be banked at 49 degrees
that close to the airport or that close to the ground.
- Maybe they lost control of the plane?
- When we see an aircraft in an abnormal attitude,
uh, we've got to look at, did something happen
where the pilots couldn't keep it level?
- The plane's position gives investigators a promising lead.
- Engine failure?
- The loss of thrust resulting from an engine failure
on one side
can yaw the airplane,
and if not appropriately managed
by the pilots in a timely fashion,
can lead to a loss of control.
- Aside from the impact damage,
there's no sign of fire to the exterior.
- The team studies the engines' compressor blades
to determine if the engines were functioning
when the plane hit the ground.
When the Gulfstream III's engines are working,
the compressor blades spin in a clockwise direction.
If the engines were still functioning
when the plane crashed,
these blades would be bent counterclockwise,
or in the opposite direction.
- No, these are all bent counterclockwise, so...
it wasn't engine failure.
- Our examination of the engines
showed that there was no pre-existing damage,
no evidence of an in-flight fire,
and also showed that they were operating normally
and at high power at the time of the impact.
- Let's take a look at the rudder.
- An airplane operating at a low airspeed
while the rudder moves to an extreme limit
could introduce a rolling moment
or also stall one of the wings,
which would further exacerbate the rolling moment.
- Investigators examine the actuator
that controls the rudder's movement.
- The piston is completely intact.
No sign of any damage.
- There was no pre-existing conditions or failures
that would have explained the accident.
The airplane was functioning normally.
- If mechanical failure didn't cause the roll,
what went wrong on approach?
- Determining the airplane's flight path helps us understand
how that airplane got to the accident site.
What was it doing?
Where was it flying? How fast was it going?
(keyboard clacking)
- Have a look at this radar data.
- With no flight data recorder,
investigators turn to Aspen's radar information
to reconstruct the Gulfstream's descent profile.
- Using the radar position and time,
so the altitude and position of the aircraft,
the performance engineers can extract the speed
of the aircraft, how fast is it descending,
and is that appropriate for the approach
that they're trying to do?
- Here's what we've got.
This is the approach they should have flown.
- Investigators examine the path the pilots
were required to follow into Aspen.
- Due to the rising terrain away from the airport,
Aspen at this time had a step-down approach
which from a profile, looks like stairs.
The pilots will step down to an altitude
based on the terrain availability.
- Pilots cannot descend below that altitude
until they reach another fix or another distance.
- And...
here's the descent the pilots actually flew.
- The radar data shows the Avjet flight
deviated from the published descent profile.
- Four miles out, they dropped 300 feet below the minimum,
and a mile later,
they dropped 900 hundred feet below the minimum altitude.
- And they stayed that way.
They flew in very low.
- If you go below a minimum altitude
before you are allowed to, then you no longer can guarantee
the safety of that aircraft.
- Why would they do that?
- Because the pilots did not fly this approach to standards,
we wanted to look into their backgrounds and training
to better understand why the accident
may have occurred.
(narrator): Why did the pilots of Avjet 3-0-3 Golf Alpha
not follow the prescribed approach procedure into Aspen?
- The captain passed his last proficiency check.
- So did the first officer. Just a couple months ago.
- Investigators learn that all Avjet pilots
are trained to land
in mountainous terrain like Aspen.
- And they both flew into Aspen together twice before
without incident.
- No accidents,
no reprimands...
Even the Captain's driving record is spotless.
- So looking into the background of this flight crew,
we really didn't see anything that stood out.
They were both well qualified, well trained
and experienced to fly this airplane
and make this trip.
- And they both got plenty of sleep
before the flight, so fatigue isn't an issue.
In fact, I don't see any issues here.
- This doesn't make any sense.
Why would two well-trained pilots fly so recklessly
below the limits?
- No matter whether you're a charter pilot,
or an airline pilot, or even just
a personal general aviation pilot,
you know, our number one job is safety.
Uh, regulations are there for a reason.
What is it that could lead a good flight crew
to go beyond those safety limits?
- Okay. So we know the pilots landed at Aspen twice before
without incident. What was different this time?
- Maybe they were trying to get eyes on the runway?
- Pull up the weather.
(tense music)
- It was important to understand exactly what was going on
with the weather, in terms of the layers of clouds,
whether they were solid or broken,
to understand
what capability these pilots may have had
to see objects on the ground.
- The crash was at 7:02 PM. Back it up to about 6:30 PM.
(beeping)
- They would've been flying in and out of some pretty heavy
cloud here. So...
maybe they didn't have a clear line on the runway.
- Okay, but these are seasoned pilots.
They should know if you don't see the runway...
- You don't try to land on it. - And yet, they did
try to land on it. - And they missed by almost
half a mile. So, did they see the runway or not?
- We should talk to the controller.
- An air traffic controller can tell you
what the visibility is,
what the weather conditions were,
what other airplanes were doing
in terms of coming into the airport
and provide eyewitness testimony
about the time of the accident.
But they also can help us understand
communications that they had with the airplane.
- So did they give you any indication at all
that they were having trouble seeing the runway?
- No. Quite the opposite.
I asked them if they could see the runway,
and they confirmed that they did.
Gulfstream three Golf Alpha, you have the runway in sight?
(Frisbie): Yeah. Runway in sight, three Golf Alpha.
- Gulfstream three Golf Alpha visual, roger.
- Hm.
- I made extra sure to confirm
because I couldn't see them.
The weather was so bad.
- Did you have any reason to doubt the pilots?
- Not at the time, but...
here's what's so odd.
They confirmed they had visual, but when they came out
of the clouds, they were headed to the right of the airport.
(engines roaring)
What are they doing?
I don't think they realized
they weren't headed for the runway
until the last second.
- When we put those pieces together, you know,
that the pilots did report on the radio
they had the runway in sight,
we had to ask ourselves: Did they really?
Did they really see the runway?
Um, might they have engaged in a little wishful thinking?
- This leaves investigators with a troubling question.
- They couldn't see the runway,
why did they go ahead with the landing?
- Maybe they were under some kind of pressure?
- We needed to know the purpose of this flight,
its schedule and the pilots' activities
before they departed for Aspen.
Looking into what happened before the flight took off
from L.A. can help us gain insight
into what might have been going on during the flight.
- So sorry to keep you waiting.
- No problem at all.
(narrator): To understand why the pilots
were so intent upon landing in Aspen,
NTSB investigators speak to the Avjet coordinator
who managed flight 3-0-3 Golf Alpha.
- The charter coordinators communicated with the pilots
moments before the flight departed Los Angeles.
They would have insights into
what was concerning the pilots,
what they were trying to accomplish,
and some of the decisions being made.
- Did you talk to the captain on the day of the flight?
- Oh, yes. And there were some problems right from the start.
- Really? How so?
- Well, the flight was supposed to leave at 4:30.
At 4:15, he called to say the passengers
still hadn't shown up.
- Well if the passengers don't show up soon,
with the long taxi out to the runway,
we won't make it to Aspen in time.
- So what are you suggesting?
- Well, we may need to divert.
- The captain was worried that because of the 7 PM
noise curfew at Aspen,
he might have to go to Rifle instead,
which is about 60 miles away.
- So he knew about the noise curfew
and he had a plan to divert if he needed.
- Absolutely.
- They knew that Rifle Colorado Airport was nearby.
They had planned for alternatives even before
they left, which is exactly what a crew should be doing.
- When did the passengers board?
- They didn't start boarding till around 4:30.
- Then what happened?
- About 10 minutes later, I got a phone call
from the client's personal assistant.
And he told me the client was very upset.
- Hm.
(assistant): What's this about diverting to Rifle?
- What do you mean?
- Once the passengers boarded,
there was a call by the charter customer's assistant
expressing concern
that the crew had told the passengers
that they might have to go to another airport.
- Welcome. Welcome. Given the delay in boarding,
it looks like we may have to divert to Rifle.
- So the client had his assistant call me.
(assistant): So my boss wants you to tell the pilot
to, well, keep his mouth shut around the passengers.
And if he has anything to say, save it until he gets there,
and then they can talk it over.
- Understood. There is nothing to worry about.
I'll take care of it.
Thank you very much for letting me know.
(sighs)
So, of course, safety comes first,
but we wanted to keep the client happy.
- And did this make it back to the captain?
- Yes, I called him right away.
- The client's very upset.
He doesn't want you speaking to the passengers anymore,
only to him.
- Understood, okay. Don't mention diverting.
- Thank you so much.
- Yup.
- He was worried that he was going to disappoint our boss,
maybe even get into trouble for upsetting the client.
But he wouldn't get into trouble.
- In a charter operation, the needs of your passengers
are front and center. You're fully aware of them.
And in a situation where a group of people
are going to a dinner
and that's the only reason they're taking this trip,
if they can't satisfy that timeline,
then there was no point of being on that aircraft.
(narrator): The Captain was told not to upset the passengers.
Did that instruction affect his decision
about diverting his plane to Rifle?
- And so this was all before they took off?
- Yes. - And was that the last time
you spoke to the captain? - No.
He called me again en route to Aspen.
- And what time was that?
- 6:30.
- We'll be landing at Aspen in about 20, 25 minutes,
but we'll have to spend the night there.
- No problem, I can book you rooms.
Hey, how are the passengers? Are they still upset?
- I don't think so.
- What about the client?
- I had a talk with the client.
It's just really important to him that we make it to Aspen.
Apparently, he's dropping a substantial amount of money
on dinner.
- The client didn't want to go to Rifle.
Rifle was more than 60 miles away;
it would have taken them too long to get there.
- I see.
Okay, well,
thank you very much for your time.
- Happy to help.
- Although the pilots would be aware
of the needs of their passengers,
at no point can that supersede
the professionalism of that crew.
Your primary and only real job
is the safety of that aircraft.
- You know, it seems they were under a lot of pressure
to land not only before the flight began,
but even during the flight.
- The crash happened more than half an hour
after that last call from the plane.
(narrator): Did commercial pressure influence the pilots
to make a risky decision that cost the lives of 18 people?
- You know, this comes up all the time.
Charter pilots often voice on chat rooms
and complaint lines
that they are pressured to keep people happy
and do really difficult things
just to satisfy a demanding customer.
And it's dangerous.
- They still had time to correct the situation.
So what happened in these final 30 minutes?
- It's here.
(narrator): NTSB investigators
turn to the cockpit voice recorder of Avjet
3-0-3 Golf Alpha
to understand why the pilots
chose to land instead of diverting.
- We could learn about the crew's decision making
and what they were doing from their conversations
with each other, um, you know, how they were planning
and using the information that was coming in
as they approached Aspen.
- You know what, let's pick it up
before they begin their final descent.
(first officer): Hey, do you remember that crazy guy
in the Lear when we were in Aspen last time?
He was, "I can see the airport" but he couldn't see it?
(laughing in recording)
- Pause that.
So 14 minutes before the crash,
they're ridiculing another pilot who tried to land
without the runway in sight.
Why did they do the same thing?
- At that point, they were still in the mode of,
we're gonna do this right,
and even sort of made a joke
about this one guy that didn't do it right.
- Okay.
- Okay, we'll shoot it from here.
I mean, we're here, but we only get to do it once.
- Alright. Once, and then we go to Rifle, right?
- Yeah, it's too late in the evening to come around.
- So right there, they're talking about
doing a missed approach.
- That was at 6:50, so two minutes later.
(narrator): 12 minutes from the airport,
the pilots confirmed their plan
to divert if they needed to.
- As the crew was approaching Aspen,
they were getting the idea that the weather was getting
more difficult to get in, and they were having
a conversation about this.
They mentioned again, "Well we might only have
one shot at this, and we have to go to Rifle".
They were really saying the right things.
(controller): Attention all aircraft.
Last aircraft went missed.
- What? - He went missed.
(first officer): He went missed?
Damn. That's not good.
- Nine minutes from crashing.
- They know the plane in front of them couldn't land.
And they know it's a bad sign for them.
- That clearly had to put some pressure on them
to say, alright, this is uh, this is not looking good.
- It should have those pilots starting to get into
the mindset of executing the missed approach
rather than landing the aircraft.
- So they know they shouldn't attempt the landing either.
- Up until now, they've been doing everything
right by the book. - Yeah.
I wonder what changed.
- Investigators discover something unusual
in the CVR transcripts.
- Huh.
It looks like the flight attendant
brought someone into the cockpit.
- About eight minutes before the accident,
somebody came into the cockpit, one of the passengers.
- Thank you very much.
(indistinct chatter)
- Do you think it's the client?
- It's possible.
- Having somebody else up on the flight deck
as you're conducting an approach
into a mountainous area at night
in poor weather is not a good idea.
- Did the presence of a passenger in the cockpit
play a role in the crash?
(tense music)
(Frisbie): The weather's gone down.
They're not making it in.
(narrator): As the crew got closer to Aspen,
the weather worsened,
making it more dangerous for planes to try to land.
- Oh, really.
- "Oh, really"?
- The only conversation that should be going on
is between the crew about aspects of the flight.
If you're having someone up there questioning
their decision making, questioning, you know,
the weather and the operation,
um, it's just such a distraction and a pressure to them.
- As the pilots approach the airport,
the situation intensified.
- Challenger nine eight Romeo, you're number one.
(Challenger pilot): Nine eight Romeo,
negative visual on the missed.
(narrator): They learn that the plane ahead of Avjet
3-0-3 Golf Alpha
also missed their approach
because they couldn't see the runway.
- It's too dangerous to land on that runway
under these conditions.
- So, what happened?
- Are we cleared to land?
- No, not yet.
He just missed,
the guy in front of us didn't make it either.
- Oh, really.
- Okay, so it sounds like this guy
is sending the pilots a message.
- Exactly.
- "Oh, really," may not sound like much,
but after all those other things that had occurred,
I think, "Oh, really" was a warning shot.
Get this thing in Aspen.
- But the pilots still had one more chance
to implement their back-up plan
to divert to another airport.
- Where's it at?
- So obviously, they still can't see the runway.
- To the right. - To the right.
- So, instead of executing a missed approach,
they're still looking for the runway,
which is actually to their left.
- There was a river valley and some roads nearby.
Might they have seen something they thought was the runway,
you know, some lights of the village or whatnot.
Then they believed they saw the runway,
but that wasn't correct.
- They just keep flying lower and lower
looking for the airport.
They were just under way too much pressure
to make good decisions.
- They had the night curfew.
They had a, the time pressure,
uh, pressure from the client as well,
um, and then with the weather coming in and out
as they stepped down,
they'd catch glimpses now and then of the ground.
(automated voice): Five hundred.
(first officer): Ref plus five.
(automated voice): Sink rate. Sink rate.
(narrator): 22 seconds after crossing
the missed approach point,
Avjet 3-0-3 Golf Alpha hits the ground.
(grunting)
(passengers screaming)
(engines roaring)
(grunting)
- So...
in Los Angeles, they were ready to divert.
Then they get chewed out for talking about diverting,
and the client tells them how important the dinner is.
Topping it all off,
the passenger enters the cockpit.
- So, by the time they get to Aspen...
- They were bound and determined to land.
- Sadly, they turned into the pilots they were ridiculing.
- All indications
from our investigation
show that these two pilots were good pilots.
Once the crew descended without the runway in sight...
the accident was inevitable.
- They just kept pushing, and step by step,
it got worse and worse until
they descended too low.
(narrator): Despite the pressures
the pilots were under to land,
there was one more safeguard
that could have prevented this tragedy.
- You're not gonna believe this.
(intriguing music)
rator): Investigators of Avjet 3-0-3 Golf Alpha
examine a safety notice
for Aspen Airport that might have prevented the crash.
- A NOTAM.
- NOTAM is an official Notice to Airmen.
- That's a notice put out by the FAA
to tell pilots about some abnormality
in the airspace system.
An approach procedure has been changed,
a navigation aide is out, um, all sorts of things.
- Two days before the crash, a NOTAM was issued
with a warning about landing at Aspen.
- As far as I can tell, it says,
"Circling NA, not authorized, at night."
- So, in other words,
they should never have been flying into Aspen at night
in the first place.
- It said that circling not authorized at night.
This approach is only a circling approach,
even if you elect to land straight in.
It actually had the effect
of making that approach not authorized at night.
- The crash was at 7:02 PM. What time was nightfall?
- Nightfall was officially at 6:55.
- Well, that's seven minutes before the crash.
Why didn't they follow the NOTAM?
- Investigators examine the Gulfstream's
briefing records to see
if it included the most recent notice.
- It looks the first officer did receive the NOTAM
over the phone before the flight.
- So who knows if he passed it on to the Captain.
- NOTAM's are hard to read,
there's a lot of um, extraneous information in them.
They tell you about everything from a burned-out lightbulb
on a tower fifteen miles away,
to the runway is closed, and everything in between.
- And what about the controller?
- NOTAM's are also distributed to ATC facilities.
They need to know about
things that affect the airspace as well.
- It never got passed on to Aspen ATC.
- The reason the tower didn't get the NOTAM
is it was supposed to get sent by, believe it or not, fax,
and for whatever reason,
it didn't get sent to the ATC facilities
that needed to know.
- Had the Controller received the NOTAM,
it might have prevented the crash.
In the final analysis, investigators conclude
the probable cause of the accident
was the flight crew's operation of the airplane
below the minimum descent altitude
without an appropriate visual reference to the runway.
- This accident happened
because the captain did not go around,
did not conduct a missed approach.
Had he done that,
they would have gone to Rifle.
And the passengers may have been frustrated,
may have been angry. There might have been a big
conversation, but they would have been alive.
- Investigators also believe external pressures
played a role in the pilots' decision-making.
- We call it "get there-itus".
We were close to the destination,
almost there and the pressure on people to make the decision.
Nothing broke, nothing really failed,
other than just the decision-making,
under pressures of "get there-itus".
- As a result of this accident,
Avjet restricts flying into Aspen
between sunset and sunrise.
The FAA also revises its specifications
for flying into Aspen,
with a minimum visibility of five miles
and a cloud ceiling of at least 44-hundred feet
above ground now required for landing.
- You see the runway?
- This is to ensure pilots always have a clear view
of the runway before landing.
- Thank you very much.
- Avjet also takes steps
to prevent unnecessary distractions in the cockpit
during the flight.
- After the accident, the company issued a bulletin
changing their rules that no passengers
were allowed in the cockpit.
- Okay, guys. Let's finish up tomorrow.
- Well, the NTSB has also made a number of recommendations
on improving the NOTAM system,
making things a little bit more graphical and easy to use
so that people can sort them out
rather than just reading a list.
- The lessons serve as a warning
to all other pilots who interact with passengers.
- I think the message of this flight
is there is no dinner date engagement,
or birthday party that is more important
than the lives of your passengers on the plane.
And the pilot has to be tough enough
to stand up to that,
because the passengers just don't know.
They're not pilots, and they do not know
that their behavior is endangering their very lives.
But it did help change the law
and change how the FAA operates
in many aspects. And for that, we're thankful.
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Subtitling: difuze