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01.01.2006
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April 06, 2005
Avianca Flight 052 - 25 JAN 1990
Permanent link ▫ ▫  
Tonight I saw the episode on the Avianca Flight 052 crash in 1990, and though I was horrified by many air disasters, this one horrified me because of one reason I shall reveal later. Now some background facts though I can't quote the exact stuff.
The intro ...
"In January 1990, Avianca Flight 52 carrying 158 passengers was placed in a holding pattern over New York in driving winds and rain. As the plane circled for over an hour it began to run out of fuel but air traffic controllers, unaware of the severity of the situation, continually delayed the landing, causing the plane to crash into a NY suburb. Who was to blame, and could such an appalling tragedy happen again? "
This Colombian plane was due for NY. It was fully loaded with fuel plu 2 hours max of extra fuel. The pilots, one very senior captain who can't speak good english, the engineer also very experienced and the first officer, a 28 year old guy who can speak English. He was the communicator. They didn't know NY was suffering from I think heavy storm and fog and the Kennedy airport was doing 30 plus landings in one hour due to backlog of flights from all over the world, and the controllers can't cope at all as fog was causing more delays and planes missing the runway due to the strong wind, fog and darkness. Avianca arrived with enough fuel for about 2 hours of extra time, they were asked to circle around and around outside of the airport, so they didn't know the airport was clogged. However, their fuel was running very low when they were asked to prepare for landing but they had to wait some more. When they had 30 minutes of fuel left or so, the Captain through his first officer gave an emergency call, telling the first controller that they are low on fuel. THey were asked to wait some more as preparing for landing. Then this controller was going off duty, passed to a 2nd guy who didn't know the first facts and so didn't know the severity of the situation. Again waited and waited. Came the 3rd controller though I can't remember whether there was a 4th. Anyway by that time the situation was so urgent, the first officer who was blasted by the captain who was already very stressed and the engineer doing the calculations knew they had little fuel and time to spare. So they told the controller they need priority, so they were asked to land. They missed the runway because of the fog. Then they were asked to do one big round circe for a 2nd attempt though they told the controller very clearly they were low on fuel. I think whether on the 1st or 2nd try, the pilots didn't know there were strong winds so low to the ground, and they had to use more fuel to stabilise the plane, thus moments before landing and a few kilometres away, the fuel was gone, engines were dead, the whole plane went pitched dark without engine and literally fell from the sky with eerie silence and a huge crash. No explosion as no fuel. Out of 160 plus passengers, about 70 plus died but many were seriously injured. The captain and his crew all died.
Investigations were held and shockingly the controllers were held to be blameless though they didn't really say to blame who then. Avianca's pilots of course. Avianca and the surviving passengers were so enraged Avianca sued the I think I can't remember what;s the organisation called but the one governing aviation in America. It was settled out of court but we all know there must be some fault on their part if not they won't settle.
The controllers had one defence, and that was why they were held blameless by their own fellow countrymen, where they said the instructions from the cockpit was unclear, that they didn't use the word EMERGENCY so the controllers were in not position to know the severity of the situation. The following is the actual verdict of the invesatigation:-
"The failure of the flight crew to adequately manage the airplane's fuel load, and their failure to communicate an emergency fuel situation to air traffic control before fuel exhaustion
occurred."
Never had I heard of a plane fell from the sky because of no fuel. Never had I seen such incompetence on the part of the controllers who when changing shifts, never bothered to tell the next guy in charge of the plane being low on fuel. Never had I seen such irresponsible behaviour. I do not think this will happen in Asia, as Asians generally will carry through a duty, we have more respect for our jobs and our duties. It was a very scary episode and I cried for the injustice. The pilots were blameless. Blame it on the weather or whatever, but when someone say the following, tell me, doesn't that constitute an emergency?
"We're running out of fuel", "and ah, we're running out of fuel, sir", "We just running out of fuel.", "Avianca zero five two, we just, ah, lost two engines and, ah, we need priority, please".
Doesn't low on fuel, priority and lost 2 engines meant emergency?? Maybe he should have said "WE ARE GOING TO CRASH SO LET US LAND FIRST!!"
"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."
Well the pilots were caught offguard by the low strong winds as you can read from the transcript. AND this is not an excuse to say some party was blameless. An airport should not handle more than it has the capacity in space AND manpower to handle.
I could only conclude this crash was horrifying because of the TIDAK APA attitude of the controllers. They didn't seem to care and the episode in Air Crash Investigations kinda cleared the whole issue for me. Anyway the acting was superb in this episode, the recreation so scary, it felt real and it was real.
I was just so appalled by the lazy bums. It was so unfortunate that people had to die because some people just don't bother.
One surviving passenger said priority in Spanish I think meant emergency. Of course it means that! And one survivor summed it best when he said how can you deny responsibility just because one word wasn;t uttered?
I can't agree more.
Do catch this repeat on Sunday 7pm. A must watch episode and maybe you will be as shocked and disgusted as I was tonight. 15 years would heal all physical wounds but the memory lingers.
- Click HERE for the full transript and read how severe it was but how not so serious the controllers were
- Click HERE to read the compensation for the survivors. Zoom straight to 1993.
- Click HERE for the verdict of the investigation and be as shocked as I was.
Anyway I am beginning to feel such sadness at the Pope's death. Don't know why.
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10 COMMENTS
It was something that could have been prevented, yet was allowed to happen. Such blatant disregard for responsibility and life. It's sad.
Like the recent case of Singapore Airlines which crashed in Taipei. The Taipei authorities chose to attribute all responsibiliy to the pilots but none to the controllers, who obviously failed to adequately inform the pilots that the runway was closed, or to the airport authorities, that failed to prevent the confusion by leaving the runway lights on. I was extremely pissed off by that.
It takes a cumulation of events to lead to an accident, but that does not mean that only one party is to be blamed.
What's wrong with admitting your mistakes? What's wrong with accepting responsibility? Which matters more? Your ego or a life? A life that was treasured by others, that meant something to other? In this case, many many lives.
This is the fact of life - as much as we would like to believe, we humans are far from being true 'homosepians' (intelligent humans) which was call ourselves.
But somone else had this this theory...they were Colombian airlines, thus America was bullying them. And they didn't have priority to land because they're not British Airways. Like this joke my family was saying,
"You British Airways? First in line..Malaysian Arilines? Fly to position no. 32..Afghanistan?? No need to land! Fly home, please!"
It was shocking though. Do you follow this series? There was one I think Topolov crash between DHL and a Russian plane full of Russia's most promising youngsters, all died. On father who was so distraught killed the Controller who couldn't be blamed. I blame the management. It was so sad.
Anyway, I don't follow the series, although I did catch a few like the case where the pilot was caught on the windshield. Sent a shiver down my spine... Wonder if they got movie-makers to re-enact that scene? Man, it was soooo real!! But seriously, was relieved that that aircraft landed safely with no casualties.
But other than that, too depressing.
That reminds me of that other documentary series called 'Minutes to Disaster' or something along that line, where they trace and piece together events that evetually led to some of the worst disasters in the world, most of which were either caused by human error, or plain indifference by the people involved. As shocking as the Air Crash Investigation series and as sad.
Anyway, Minutes To Disaster, except for that extremely depressing one on TWA-KLM crash (I cried watching that), the rest were simply boring because minute by minute, so darn long and tedious.
Air Crash Investigations is great because the acting, recap and the analysis very impartial and top notched. Love this series!
As for mistakes. Well... People made mistakes, but for something like this, it doesn't seems to be a mistake, but a deliberate attempt to made Avianca to run out fuel in mid air. The pilots would have already screaming at the controllers at every language they know, and any sane and indepedant controller would flip an emergency situation at the sign of distress.
In short, this is no mistake, it's an assasination attempt done neatly in a professional manner.
It's interesting though that Air Crash Investigations made no further detailing about the Flight Data Recorder, not to mention their mention of this is biggest rescue mission at the New York area pre 9/11, as if the two are related in anyway, or maybe they are?
As for humans never learn from mistakes.
What we need to learn is that, we are not alone, and there are entities out there that want us to harm ourself.
'They' are the ones who tricked us to make mistakes.
We will never learn from our mistakes until we acknowledge the source of the problem. And it's not us, it's 'them'.
If we think the source of the problem is us, we will keep repeating our mistakes.
This programme had the actual voice data recordings from this case and I have to say that the crew were no way forceful enough given their predicament. No one wants to panic, but the Avianca crew sounded like there was no problem whatsoever as they were passed around from holding pattern to holding pattern. They were polite beyond belief in an instance where they should have been belligerent and urgent. I'm certain if the crew had been more forceful in conveying the fact that they were so low on fuel lives would surely have been saved. Nevertheless, when all said and done this case is an absolute tragedy..
I disagree. All cockpit voices were calm beyond belief and very polite. I heard the Alaska 261 recording and it surprised me that the pilot was so polite. The controller should learn to recognise key words, not emotion. I feel the controller should be blamed in this tragedy. The pilots did what they could, expect to scream at the top of their lungs.
Let's be clear here, the predicament of Avianca 052 was good reason to become animated, there are situations in life whereby panic is perfectly understandable and this was one of them. Why weren't the crew complaining about their plight??
There were undoubtedly mistakes made by the flight controllers, but there was nowhere near enough urgency on the part of the flight crew to express their desperate situation!
There also appeared to be a language problem between the Captain and the First Officer which certainly does not appear to have helped matters. The more I watch this programme the sadder it makes me.
That shows a very strong tendency to what some people call "racism" or "prejudice" and strongly associate with ignorance.
There are parameters in which these men have to operate. Crashes do not happen every day. From evidence I have seen, in fact, a fatal crash involving a passenger jet is only 1 in several tens of millions.
The controllers live under a great deal of stress, but like any job in any country, a certain sense of complaceny will set in. Unless you are alerted to extraordinary circumstances they had no reason to alter the courses and delay the landings of several planes in front of them.
To find further blame and extoll an even greater punishment settlement on the controllers would be pointless. They were not lazy, the pilots of the plane were extraordinariy neglectful. They owed the 170 passengers aboard that plane a declaration of emergency. Without that declaration, te sense was only that the plane would be in emergency soon if it did not land, not that it was in fact ALREADY in emergency.
To use a metaphor, it is like discovering that your friend is having a heart attack and contacting the emergency line to tell them that he is "not feeling well" and to send help when they get a chance.
The pilots actually had an obligation to declare an emergency in that situation. The Captain himself asked on more than one occasion in the First Officer had told them it was an emregency and he wrongfully told him he had.
To blame in an underhanded way on the "laziness" of americans is just frustratingly angry to me.
I hope you have bettered yourself in the year or so since you have made this post.