Avianca Flight 52

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Date:
25.01.1990
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Avianca Flight 52 was a regularly scheduled flight from Bogotá to New York via Medellín, Colombia. On Thursday, January 25, 1990, a Boeing 707-321B registered as HK-2016 operating this flight, ran out of fuel on approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport, resulting in the aircraft crashing into the small village of Cove Neck, New York on the north shore of Long Island. Eight of the nine crew members and 65 of the 149 passengers on board were killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the crash was caused by the flight crew failing to properly declare a fuel emergency, resulting in air traffic control underestimating the seriousness of the situation.

On the evening of January 25, 1990, fog and wind conditions was causing congestion at New York, which meant that Avianca Flight 52 was held by air traffic control in a series of three holding patterns, initially for 19 minutes, then for 29 minutes near Atlantic City and at (39 nautical miles (72 km)) south of the airport for another 29 minutes. In total, the flight is held for 1 hour and 17 minutes. At 8:44 pm, the first officer indicated that they needed "priority", probably relating to the fact that their plane's fuel was getting critically low. The first officer told air traffic control, "... we'll be able to hold about five minutes that's all we can do?" The first officer also stated, "(our alternate) was Boston but we can't do it now we, we, don't, we run out of fuel now."

Once on approach, the critically low fuel meant that the flight only had about 5 minutes of fuel and would need to land urgently. The crew were fatigued because they were flying the aircraft manually due to the autopilot not working. This meant that the flight crew had to intercept the localiser manually and fly the glide slope by hand, which was made more difficult because of wind shear.

The New York approach controller claimed that he failed to hear that Avianca Flight 52 could no longer make its alternate, so was unaware of the critical fuel situation. He cleared the aircraft for a final approach to runway 22L at 9:02 pm. The low fuel necessitated that the crew land the plane on the first attempt. During the final approach phase, it became evident from the cockpit voice recorder transcripts that the Captain was struggling to hear what the first officer and/or the controllers were communicating. Kennedy tower cleared Flight 52 for landing at 9:15 pm. Despite the critically low fuel and the fatigued crew, the approach and landing preparation were routine. At 9:22 pm at an altitude of 500 feet above the ground, the aircraft encountered wind shear. The nose dropped, causing the plane to descend dangerously near to the ground. The aircraft's ground proximity warning system was triggered, sounding warning alarms. The flight crew desperately tried to visually locate the runway, but were unable to do so because of the weather, forcing the Captain to abort the approach. The aircraft came close to crashing just short of the runway in a swamp just north of Rockaway Boulevard. The first officer alerted the controller that they were low on fuel, and in a subsequent transmission stated, "We're running out of fuel, sir." The controller then asked the crew to climb, to which the first officer replied, "No, sir, we're running out of fuel."

At approximately 9:32 pm, engines number four and three flamed out. This situation was reported to the controller, who cleared the flight for another approach. The flight crew frustratingly tried to locate the runway in an attempt to land. The remaining engines soon also flamed out, causing the cockpit voice recorder to stop working. The controller lost radio contact with the aircraft at 9:34 pm. The aircraft lost height and crashed into a hillside on the north shore of Long Island, 16 miles (26 km) from the airport. The cockpit separated from the rest of the fuselage, smashing into the wooden deck of an unoccupied home. The captain, the first officer and the flight engineer all died in the crash.

Because there was no fuel, there was no fire, which may have contributed to saving some lives.[5] The cockpit was found 100 feet (30 m) from the crash site. 85 people survived the crash with injuries, while 73 passengers and crew died. The aircraft (worth about $5 million) was destroyed beyond repair.

Emergency response

The recovery efforts for Flight 52 proved to be difficult since the aircraft had crashed into the hilly, sparsely populated North Shore, making it difficult for emergency crews to reach. This was compounded by the narrow, winding roads that lead into the hamlet. Rescue squads from all over Long Island responded to the crash. The weather conditions and the darkness of night made the search crews' task even more challenging. The first ambulances to arrive performed triage, selecting the most critically injured passengers for transport to area hospitals. But so many other ambulances had arrived that a traffic jam developed, and some rigs were unable to leave the site immediately. Ambulatory passengers walked to other ambulances and arrived at hospitals sooner than critically injured ones.

Passengers and injuries

The senior flight attendant, who sustained serious injuries, was the sole surviving crew member of the disaster.

The adult passengers on the Medellin-New York segment consisted of 61 males and 61 females. Sixteen children between 3 and 15 years of age, including eight males and eight females, flew on this segment.

Of the surviving passengers, 80 suffered serious injuries and four sustained minor injuries. Of the passengers indicated by the NTSB map to have been assigned to first class (Rows 4 and 5), one survived. The NTSB stated that as the airline did not assign all of the filled seats and that some passengers relocated to other seats after boarding, the NTSB could not determine the injuries in relation to precise seating arrangements. The crash killed 73 people of the 158 on board.

Cause and investigation

The NTSB's report on the accident determined the cause as pilot error due to the crew never declaring a fuel emergency to air traffic control as per International Air Transport Association (IATA) guidelines. A contributing factor was the lack of a standardized terminology for pilots and controllers for minimum and emergency fuel states. The crew asked for a "priority" landing which, because of claimed language differences between English and Spanish, can be interpreted as an emergency to Spanish-speaking pilots but not to English-speaking air traffic controllers. This may have caused some confusion amongst the pilots when ATC confirmed their priority status. The NTSB investigation also found that ATC services were inadequate in several areas although these were not considered causal. The Washington controller failed to inform the flight crew of additional holding and during handover the JFK controller failed to forward the remark by the flight crew regarding their fuel situation to the new controller. He had also failed to transmit the latest wind shear information, which could have alerted the crew to possible difficulties in landing. Avianca Airlines sued the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the actions of the air traffic controllers, who they felt were negligent in misunderstanding the pilots' reports. The FAA countered, stating that the crew never declared a fuel emergency until the final minutes before the crash and had never reported the amount of fuel they had left when asking for a priority landing, making it impossible for air traffic controllers to give them correct priority status.

Further from the NTSB report: "There was no flight following or interaction with the Avianca Airlines dispatcher for AVA052 following takeoff from Medellin ...Contributing to the accident was the flight crew's failure to use an airline operational control dispatch system to assist them during the international flight into a high-density airport in poor weather." This accident, along with Hapag-Lloyd Airlines Flight 3378, has been used as an example of why airlines in all countries should always have flight dispatchers proactively following flights, as required in the U.S. by Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) Part 121.

Many passengers were upset when the FAA stated that it had no responsibility in covering the crash.

Aftermath

After some deliberations, a settlement was reached in which the United States paid for around 40% of the settlements with the passengers and their families; the rest was paid by Avianca.

Following Flight 52, air traffic controllers were more conservative in determining if Avianca flights were running low on fuel and required priority landing. On June 22, 1990, a Boeing 727 was immediately cleared to land when the pilot declared a minimum fuel situation. In another instance, on August 4, 1990, controllers declared a fuel emergency for the pilot due to confusion over the remaining fuel. The jet landed with two more flying hours to spare.

Dramatization

The story of the disaster was featured on the second season of Canadian National Geographic Channel show Mayday (TV series). The episode was the fifth of the second season and is entitled "Deadly Delay" or "Missing Over New York" depending on the country in which it is airing. This story was also featured on the MSNBC episode Human Error of its Why Planes Crash series.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, the crash of Flight 52 was discussed in a section on different cultures' responses to authority figures.

In popular culture

In the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, stock footage of the plane wreckage was utilized to represent a plane that supposedly crashed due to turbulence.

 

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