Original subtitles

NARRATOR: On approach during a thunderstorm.

Both runways are wet.

Severe turbulence.

NARRATOR: American Airlines Flight

1572 loses a valuable lifeline.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): Be advised,

the tower is closed.

There's a leaky window in the tower.

The tower had actually been abandoned.

This is a very unusual situation.

NARRATOR: NTSB investigators learn that a supervisor

went to the deserted tower.

I told them they could land.

Landing is at your discretion.

The runway does appear to be clear.

NARRATOR: Moments before touchdown,

disaster strikes, and both of the plane's engines fail.

What role did an out of service tower

play in jeopardizing the lives of the 78 people on board?

Tom, we're going down.

NARRATOR: On a stormy November night,

American Airlines Flight 1572 cruises

35,000 feet above Pennsylvania.

Smoother ride up here than at 33,000.

NARRATOR: Captain Kenneth Lee, a former military pilot,

has been flying with American Airlines for 10 years.

That's for sure.

NARRATOR: First Officer John Richards also

flew with the military and has seven years of

commercial aviation experience.

This was a very experienced flight

crew that was very comfortable with the aircraft

they were flying.

NARRATOR: They're flying the MD-83,

a twin engine narrowbody jet.

It has two turbofan engines mounted in the tail.

It has a T tail and a swept main wing.

It was one of the last aircraft that actually had

a direct connection between the controls in the cockpit and

the surfaces on the airplane.

Better get the cabin ready for our descent.

Hi.

We're starting our descent now so you can lock the cabin

up and prepare for landing.

Will do.

Please, fasten your seatbelt.

NARRATOR: It's a short 2-hour flight from Chicago's O'Hare

Airport to Bradley International Airport

at Windsor Locks, Connecticut.

There are five crew and 73 passengers

on board, many of them returning home.

Please, put your seat in the upright position.

Flight started out rather routinely.

It was the second day of a three-day leg

trip for these guys.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): American 1572,

descend at pilot's discretion.

Maintain flight level 190.

Pilot's discretion to 190.

American 1572.

Let's go down.

NARRATOR: The flight is 25 minutes from landing.

I'm gonna get the ATIS real quick.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): Bradley Airport Information,

Victor 03.

NARRATOR: ATIS, or Automatic Terminal Information Service,

provides pilots with important airport data,

like weather and approaches.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): Notice

to airmen, runway 24 and 15.

Both runways are wet.

Severe turbulence.

All right.

Sounds like it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

I'll tell the passengers.

NARRATOR: They'll encounter some rough weather along the way,

but nothing this experienced crew can't manage.

Many times, I have experienced the same kind of winds

and weather that this crew has had,

and the winds will have a drastic effect on the airplane

and pushing it around.

The crew was very familiar with the weather

and they were highly experienced enough to handle anything.

KENNETH LEE: We've started our descent.

And right now, they've reported some moderate turbulence

on the descent, so it might get a little choppy.

Just watch me the whole way.

Yeah, man, you got it.

NARRATOR: The pilots prepare for the landing.

Any comments, just scream out.

You're gonna get a lot of turbulence.

You know how to land it.

They support each other.

They back each other up.

If anything goes wrong or somebody does something wrong,

the other one catches it and corrects it.

NARRATOR: 50 miles from the airport, the weather worsens.

That's a lot of rain.

I can see that.

The end route controllers had told them

the weather was gonna be bad due to thunderstorms and wind

shear.

NARRATOR: Wind shear is a sudden change

of wind speed or direction that can be

dangerous close to the ground.

American 1572, descend and maintain 4,000.

Descending 4,000.

1572.

NARRATOR: Fight 1572 is the last plane flying

into Bradley Airport tonight.

Approaching 4,000.

NARRATOR: The crew is making a difficult,

non-precision approach.

Well, a non-precision approach means that you

don't have a navigation aid.

There's more reliance on the crew to figure out the altitude

and descend those altitudes correctly and avoid all

the terrain that's below there.

We're established on the inbound track

for the VOR approach.

Flaps five.

Check.

Flaps five.

NARRATOR: This type of approach creates

extra work for the pilots.

The non-precision approach is the hardest of all

the approaches to fly because it takes so much

attention to fly the approach.

It has to be set up correctly.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): American 1572, be advised,

the tower is closed at this time due to a problem with one

of the windows.

NARRATOR: The non-precision approach in rough weather

aren't the only challenges facing the crew.

Copy.

There's a leaky window in the tower.

NARRATOR: At larger airports, the control tower

has two areas for managing incoming and outgoing flights,

approach control, typically located

on one of the lower floors, and tower control at the top.

Mark Guiod is the air traffic manager at Bradley

Airport for 12 years.

Once they're within 5 miles of the airport,

the approach controller turns them over to the tower,

bring them in for landing and taxiing to the gate.

NARRATOR: But a leaky window has shut down

the tower, forcing the air traffic

controller to leave her post.

Tower controllers are the pilot's eyes on the ground.

They're the ones that ensure that the runway is

sterile and clear for them to land

on, that there are no obstructions, no other traffic.

They also provide critical information in the late stages

of the flight.

Flaps 11, please.

You got it.

NARRATOR: The pilots must now rely on their own observations

to land safely.

The pilots were expecting someone

to be able to be in the tower, the controller,

to see the condition of the runway

and to give them the information needed to see if anything

during the thunderstorm had blown onto the runway

so they could make a safe landing.

NARRATOR: The approach controller is

closely monitoring the flight.

He notices the plane is veering off course.

American 1572, it looks like you're

a bit to the left of final.

Yeah, it looks like we're left a bit.

Copy.

NARRATOR: 7 miles from the airport, Captain Lee

gets the plane back on course.

Set gear down.

Gear down.

I'm going up to the tower.

NARRATOR: The supervisor in approach control volunteers

to give the crew of Flight 1572 some guidance.

American 1572, there is someone in the tower.

It's not officially open, but you

can change the tower frequency.

It would have been a big relief to the crew

to have someone in the tower, the controller

up there to give them the information

they need for the approach.

Hey, tower, American 1572.

We are 6 miles from runway 15.

Landing is at your discretion.

The runway does appear to be clear.

PILOT (ON RADIO): Copy.

Any landing is really at the pilot's discretion,

but in this particular case, they

needed to be extra vigilant because they did not have

any official tower assistance.

Flaps 40.

NARRATOR: The pilots configure the aircraft for landing.

Flaps and slats to 40-40.

You are cleared to land.

There's 1,000 feet.

KENNETH LEE: OK.

NARRATOR: Flight 1572 is just 60 seconds from touchdown.

What the--

(screaming)

Bells and whistles were going off, lights were flashing,

and something had to be done.

NARRATOR: 2 and 1/2 miles from Bradley Airport in Connecticut,

American Airlines Flight 1572 has struck something

while descending to the runway.

The pilots must act quickly to avoid crashing.

Go, go round.

Going around.

NARRATOR: They pulled the nose up in an attempt to recover.

Flaps 15.

Positive rate, gear up.

Gear up.

The crew immediately began a go around procedure.

They raised the gear, raised the flaps,

crammed the engines forward, and immediately after that, things

went downhill very quickly.

(alarm sounding)

Left motor's failed.

NARRATOR: Seconds after the pilots

commence the go around, the plane's left engine

loses power.

That's the last thing you need to have happen is a power

failure on one of the engines.

There's the runway, straight ahead.

OK, tell them we're going down.

Tell them emergency.

Hey, tower, call for emergency equipment.

We're going down on the runway.

Looks like we've got an emergency on 1572.

Send the trucks.

Emergency vehicles have been dispatched.

NARRATOR: As the pilots prepare for an emergency landing,

the situation worsens.

The right engine also fails, turning

the MD-83 into a 60-ton glider.

They realized they had the second power failure,

which made double trouble.

NARRATOR: Without its engines, the plane

has drifted further off course.

Captain Lee tries to line it back up with the runway.

You've got it, dude. You're gonna make it.

NARRATOR: But they may not have enough lift to reach it.

A stall is an aerodynamic effect.

It's when the wings lose lift and the airplane

loses directional control.

The only way to fly out of a stall

is max power, which they did not have.

Hold on, guy.

Hold it down, Lee.

Hold it down.

Hold it down.

Hold it down.

Hold it down.

Hold it.

God bless you.

You made it.

It was a miracle that the first officer

saw the runway and the crew reacted so quickly.

It was a very good reaction and certainly

saved a lot of people's lives.

NARRATOR: Flight 1572 has landed safely after

a treacherous final approach.

Everyone has survived, and remarkably, only one person

has suffered a minor injury.

The pilots are hailed as heroes for saving their plane

and everyone on board.

One of the key things about something like this

is that you never stop flying the airplane.

And those who do don't live to tell about it.

NARRATOR: The events that nearly brought down Flight

1572 are a complete mystery.

What have we got so far?

NARRATOR: It will be up to investigators

from the National Transportation Safety Board,

or NTSB, to find the answers.

Bob Benson heads up the team.

I was the investigator in charge

with about a dozen NTSB people underneath me,

plus many people from the industry.

The aircraft hit the ground hard approaching

the runway threshold.

Maybe the engines had something to do with it.

NARRATOR: Did a loss of engine power cause

Flight 1572 to crash land

in front of the runway threshold.

When we first arrived at the accident site,

our first order of business really

was to kind of do a reconnaissance,

look at the aircraft.

This thing looks like it flew through a war zone.

And during our initial examination,

the aircraft was very, very damaged.

It reminded me of something like a B-17

that had gone through a raid on Schweinfurt in World War II.

It was beat to heck.

Branches sticking out of the landing gear,

engine blades missing, battered flaps.

The aircraft was unflyable.

They definitely hit some trees.

They sure did.

And the engines definitely had power when

they shredded those branches.

NARRATOR: Mangled branches in the plane's engines

indicate that they were working normally.

The discovery raises another question.

If the engines had power, why'd they hit the trees?

The main question became why the aircraft

was low enough to hit trees and still make it to the runway.

If you're gonna analyze an action like this which is be

categorized as a controlled flight into terrain,

you have to understand where the airplane went

and when it went there and why it went there.

Where exactly did they hit the trees?

NARRATOR: To understand why Flight 1572 struck trees,

investigators try to identify the first point of impact.

The trees they hit are on top of a ridge about 2 and 1/2

miles northwest of the runway.

We have a team out there now.

Let's see if the trees or the ridge were marked on the chart.

The approach chart itself, when you look at it,

had the ridge marked with a small dot with the altitude.

The chart has the top of the ridge at 819 feet.

Once we began to look at the approach

chart itself that the crew was using,

we noted that the ridge line was just a mere dot with the number

819 next to it and altitude.

That dot could have been anything.

It could have been a building, a giant tree.

Other airlines use a slightly different

chart that shows topographical features,

including this ridge line.

NARRATOR: Did Flight 1572 come in

too low because there was a lack of detail

on their approach chart?

Do we have an altitude for the tree strike?

I need an altitude for the first impact mark.

INVESTIGATOR (ON RADIO): 771 feet.

They shouldn't have been anywhere near those trees.

NARRATOR: The team is surprised to discover that when Flight

1572 hit trees, it was 48 feet below the altitude

listed for the ridge line.

They weren't just below the ridge.

They dropped 309 feet below the minimum descent altitude.

NARRATOR: The Minimum Descent Altitude, or MDA,

is the lowest altitude a crew can descend to until they're

able to see the runway.

It's designed to keep planes above terrain or obstructions.

Those altitudes are hard altitudes.

When the FAA builds those altitudes in there,

they have to take in consideration

of all the clearances, the trees,

the elevation to keep the airplane at a safe altitude.

Why would they drop so low?

Maybe there was something wrong with their altimeters.

Investigators see the airplane descended too low,

so the question is, did the crew have the correct indication?

See if the static system is working.

Pitot-static system was quite important because that system

controls altitude, altimeters.

It controls airspeed indicators.

And it also controls the vertical velocity indications.

NARRATOR: Did sensors provide incorrect data

to the plane's altimeters?

The MD-83 has three sets of sensors

on the exterior fuselage.

They measure air pressure to determine airspeed,

altitude, and vertical speed.

If one of the static sensors is leaking or obstructed,

it can give pilots inaccurate information,

making them think they're above or below their actual altitude.

If the pitot tube is clogged,

you lose those vital instruments,

and that can happen from a variety of reasons.

Pitot-static systems have caused problems before,

problems severe enough to cause crashes.

You ready?

Yep.

NARRATOR: The test forces air into the sensor

to determine if the air pressure is being measured accurately.

But it proves to be a dead end.

The static system is working.

Well, then, let's see what the controllers can tell us.

It's always valuable to be able to speak to the air traffic

controllers after an accident.

Well, often, the air traffic controller

is the last person to speak to the crew prior to an accident.

Did the crew report anything unusual on their descent

into Windsor Locks?

No.

No, it was a standard approach.

But the weather conditions weren't great at the time.

Were there any downdrafts?

NARRATOR: Did strong winds push Flight 1572 into the trees?

If an airplane encounters severe downdrafts,

it could push the airplane down several hundred feet.

NARRATOR: Wind shear poses a danger to aircraft.

In 1985, a severe downdraft slammed Delta Airlines Flight

191 into the ground more than a mile short of the runway

in Dallas, Texas.

137 people lost their lives.

In 1994, a year before Flight 1572's close call

in Connecticut, US Air Flight 1016 crashed into trees

while attempting to land in a powerful thunderstorm

in North Carolina.

They plowed into a residential neighborhood,

killing 37 people.

Thunderstorms have incredible wind shear.

They can have updrafts 200 miles an hour.

And then, you know, about half a second later,

after you pass through that, you get a downdraft

at 200 miles an hour.

There was a lot of wind around the airport all night.

What about when this flight was coming through?

There was some wind shear.

NARRATOR: Investigators learned that airport sensors

registered some downdrafts.

We made sure to give them updates.

Like I said, it was rough.

So they knew what they were flying into?

Yes.

Given the weather conditions at the time

and the unstable air, investigators

were able to determine that there may have been downdrafts

up to 300 to 400 feet per minute occurring

at the time of this event.

So if there was a downdraft, these guys would

have been prepared for it?

Oh, yes.

It was possible that wind shear could have pulled

the aircraft down into the trees,

but a careful look at the weather at the time,

after that, we determined that simply wasn't true.

Was there anything else out of the ordinary

that night besides the weather?

Well, the tower was shut down for repairs at the time.

Leaky window.

One of our supervisors went up to make sure they landed OK.

You mean the tower was down during their approach?

Yes.

I'd like to speak with the supervisor

who was in the tower.

Sure, of course.

NARRATOR: Did Flight 1572 slam into trees due to a lack

of guidance from the tower?

Air traffic control work is demanding

and it's a precise job.

If-- if there are any major disruptions,

either in the tower or on the radar scope,

it could affect aircraft traffic greatly.

Were there any signs the crew was

having trouble during approach?

Not really.

It was all normal until they called in the emergency.

Take me through what happened.

They were already 6 miles out, lined up with the runway.

The runway looked clear, so I told them they could land.

PILOT (ON RADIO): We are 6 miles from runway 15.

Landing is at your discretion.

The runway does appear to be clear.

PILOT (ON RADIO): Copy.

Did you give them an actual clearance for landing?

The tower was closed.

I could only give advisories.

It's up to them to decide after that if they want to land.

Advisories are just information provided

to the pilot for their own use.

They can listen to it, they can not listen to it.

It's up to them.

In this case, the tower was not open,

so therefore, he didn't have authority

to issue with any clearance.

NARRATOR: Investigators still don't know if poor weather

and a closed control tower caused

the pilots to drop below the minimum descent altitude

and into the trees.

Let's start it at 12:53 when the crew contacts the tower.

NARRATOR: Investigators turn to the cockpit voice recording

of Flight 1572's final approach to determine

why the plane dropped too low and flew into trees.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): Landing is at your discretion.

The runway does appear to be clear.

And what are you showing right now for winds?

170 at 24.

PILOT (ON RADIO): Copy.

He's checking the runway, giving them weather updates.

Solid job so far.

NARRATOR: The team listens to the supervisor giving the crew

guidance to help them land.

It was a good initiative for him to do that.

It was something some people would not have done based

on the fact that the tower itself

was a bit of a precarious area.

PILOT (ON RADIO): Flaps 40.

Flaps and slats to 40-40.

You are clear to land.

OK.

Give me 1,000 down.

1,000 down.

You got it.

Stop that.

1,000 feet a minute?

There's no way.

NARRATOR: As they neared the ground,

the crew decided to make their final descent

at 1,000 feet per minute, nearly double what is normal.

That, in my mind, is quite excessive.

He didn't have to descend that steeply.

Especially on a non-precision approach where you have

a minimum descent altitude that you should not be going below,

the faster you're descending, the earlier you have to start

leveling off or else you end up going below

the target altitude by the time you

correct and come back up again.

According to the descent profile,

they're 5 miles from the airport at 1,900 feet.

NARRATOR: Using the radar beacon data from air traffic control,

investigators track Flight 1572's cockpit conversation

throughout the descent.

At 1,000 feet per minute, they're below their MDA

in less than a minute.

Sure, that's fast, but the first officer should

be calling out the altitudes.

While the aircraft is descending,

the pilot is supposed to monitor the airplane's

MDA, minimum descent altitude.

The first officer should call at 1,000 above the MDA

to the captain, and then 100 foot to the MDA,

and then the MDA altitude.

OK.

Let's listen to the first officer's call outs.

PILOT (ON RADIO): There's 1,000 feet.

Good.

He made the 1,000 foot call out.

NARRATOR: But they don't hear any more call outs after that.

The first officer called out the 1,000 foot above the MDA.

He did not call out the 100 foot above the MDA.

NARRATOR: Investigators then hear something unusual.

1,080 is your--

Right.

You're going below your-- your--

Hang on.

Was that the minimum descent altitude call out?

I think it was supposed to be.

NARRATOR: The team discovers that the first officer

mishandled the remaining call outs.

The first officer started to call out for the MDA,

but never finished his sentence.

So he makes half a call at their minimums.

And then doesn't say anything else until they're below it.

And by then, they've hit the trees.

NARRATOR: Why did the pilots make such a critical error

so close to landing?

Let's talk to the pilots.

In this particular case, we were very fortunate to have

a live crew to interview.

We wanted to determine exactly what they were thinking

about during the accident.

Walk me through your actions 4 miles from the airport

as you approached minimum descent altitude.

Look, the weather was rough.

We were two hours late departing.

I was monitoring the instruments.

1,080 is your--

Right.

OK, and then what?

As we got closer to the minimum descent altitude,

I looked outside for the airport,

and when I looked back, we were below minimums.

You're going below your--

During that time he was looking out,

he was not monitoring the flight gauges as

closely as he should have been.

In this case, the appropriate procedure

would have had the first officer glued to the altimeter

and the compass and other instruments in the cockpit

until the captain said, I see the runway.

Why didn't you call for a go around?

Well, there was no time.

We immediately hit the trees.

What the--

It was a stressful night.

There could be a-- a bit of task saturation in there.

This went from an easy, kind of relaxed flight

with a little bit of weather difficulty to, oh my gosh,

everything's going wrong really, really fast.

Something doesn't add up.

The first officer couldn't have been at his minimum seconds

before hitting the trees.

Maybe there was an issue with the altimeter settings.

NARRATOR: Pilots must calibrate the altimeters based

on outside air pressure, which can change dramatically

in extreme weather conditions.

Pilots frequently recalibrate the altimeters to maintain

an accurate altitude reading.

Altimeter settings are very important.

You can't do an approach in bad weather

unless you know what the altitude of your airplane is.

Let's see what settings they used.

There's a lot of rain.

I can see that.

In this case, because of this storm that was going

through that area, the pressure was falling rapidly,

and when that happens, your altimeter setting

goes down quickly.

It means if you don't reset your altitude,

then your airplane is flying lower than you think it is.

Here.

The dispatcher updated them with an altimeter setting of 29.23.

NARRATOR: NTSB investigators check whether the pilots

of American Airlines Flight 1572 properly

set the altimeter during the stormy approach

into Bradley Airport.

What time was that?

12:30 AM.

That was 25 minutes before they hit the trees.

And with the changing weather conditions,

they must have received an update from Bradley ATC.

One thing that the crew considers and expects

from the tower, our air traffic, is the update of the weather

as quick as possible so they can also

amend what they need to do.

OK, they first contacted approach control at 12:43.

Bradley approach, American 1572, we are at 11,000 feet.

NARRATOR: Investigators expect the approach controller to give

the crew a weather update, including

the altimeter pressure setting.

The approach control issue the altimeter setting

on initial contact when an arriving aircraft

enters their airspace.

The altimeter is displayed as a digital display

in the control tower as well.

TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (ON RADIO): American

1572, Bradley approach, roger.

Expect VOR runway 15 approach.

NARRATOR: But the update is never provided.

Approach did not update their altimeter

setting, even though the pressure was dropping rapidly.

There's nothing at all from approach right up until he

passes them off to the tower.

Why wouldn't the approach controller

give them a weather update?

Good question.

Let's ask him.

One thing that puzzled investigators was why the air

traffic controllers in the Bradley tower

didn't keep the pilots updated with the current altimeter

setting.

You mentioned before that the weather

was quite active that night.

Yes.

It was changing quickly all night.

What was the airport's altimeter setting

at the time of the accident?

Let me see.

29.15.

NARRATOR: Investigators learn that the altimeter pressure

setting at the time of the accident

was not the setting the pilots were originally given.

Why didn't the crew receive an updated setting?

Um.

29.15.

I didn't think to give it to them.

Sometimes things that you do over and over and over again

become too routine, and late at night, when there's not

a whole lot going on, sometimes, those are the things

that drop through the cracks.

We wondered about that--

that excuse a little bit, but it's what he said.

So in essence, the pilots did not

have the current altimeter setting

when they flew the approach.

We got the altimeter setting

from the time of the accident.

NARRATOR: Comparing the two altimeter settings will

reveal how much lower the plane was flying

than it should have been.

0.08.

The difference in the altimeter setting from what

they had put on their instruments

to what reality was about 0.08 inches of mercury,

which equates to 76 feet.

Because of the pilot's outdated setting,

they thought they were 76 feet higher than they actually were.

NARRATOR: The discovery is eye-opening.

Once you get close to the ground, 76 feet is a big deal.

Once you're coming across the minimum descent altitude

and you're keeping the airplane level at the minimum descent

altitude, 76 feet is critical.

The question is, would they have hit anything

had they been 76 feet higher?

Well, we know they struck the trees

at an altitude of 771 feet.

Add 76 feet to that.

They wouldn't have hit anything.

No impact.

If they had the correct altimeter setting,

even though they went below the MDA,

they still would have been 76 feet higher

and we probably wouldn't be talking about this right

now because they would have missed the trees.

That doesn't explain why they were

309 feet below the minimum descent altitude.

76 feet of that are on ATC.

The other 233 feet are pilot error.

This was out of the control of the pilots to a certain extent,

but going below the MDA should have

been caught by both the first officer and the captain.

This is what created the accident.

In the end, it came down to the crew's decision.

NARRATOR: Investigators now understand

what happened to Flight 1572.

The outdated altimeter setting and the rough weather

meant that the crew had almost no room for error

on the approach.

And when they were descending too fast

and passed their minimum descent altitude,

there was no way they could recover

before hitting the trees.

NARRATOR: Only one question remains unanswered.

In spite of hitting the trees, how did they make that landing?

Here's the FDR readout.

NARRATOR: NTSB investigators turn to Flight 1572's flight

data recorder to learn how the crew

managed to recover their jet after they struck the trees.

So they hit the trees and they immediately pull the flaps back

to 15 and go to max thrust.

NARRATOR: The data shows that the crew quickly configured

the plane for a go around.

Go, go around.

Go around.

Flaps 15.

Positive rate.

Gear up.

Gear up.

Then, just as they begin their go around,

they lose their left engine.

The aircraft actually ingested trees, the tops of the trees

into the engines.

Left motor's failed.

Followed by their right engine.

(alarm blaring)

Here, you have a scenario where something devastating

just happened, we just plowed through some trees in the top

of a ridge 2 and 1/2 miles away from the runway,

and losing capabilities on this aircraft by the second.

They've got the nose way up, they're losing speed,

and both their engines are gone.

That's a recipe for a stall if I've ever seen one.

All of a sudden, they were starting to lose airspeed.

They were in a nose high attitude,

and that's the worst time that can happen.

Airspeed is what makes the airplane fly.

If there isn't enough air moving over the wings,

the wings stop flying.

And that is what's referred to as a stall.

There's the runway straight ahead.

Fortunately, the first officer saw the runway.

They had to get the airplane on the ground in a hurry

because it would not be able to keep on flying

with the engine power they had.

OK.

Tell them we're going down.

Tell them emergency.

So now, he's gotta reconfigure the aircraft again.

And remember, this is all happening in seconds.

He's gotta focus on trying to save whatever altitude

and airspeed he has left to make it across the fence

into the runway environment.

This is a critical stage of flight

now because he doesn't have power.

All he can do is trade altitude for airspeed.

And we know their flaps were all the way down at 40.

Flaps 40.

All the way down.

They're all the way down.

He's gotta generate something else that's

gonna get him across the fence, and that's

when he drops 40 degrees flaps.

The drag from the flaps slows them down,

but for the first few seconds, it balloons them up.

40 degrees of flaps change the curve of the wing,

which increases the lift of the wing and gives him that--

that extra little bounce to get a little bit further.

If he had not had done that or if he would have delayed it

a little bit, the accident could have been totally catastrophic.

You've got it, dude. You're gonna make it.

They glide down to the runway.

Unfortunately, they didn't have quite enough airspeed

and altitude, so they landed early,

kind of scooted and flopped onto the pavement of the runway.

They made mistakes going into the tree strike, if you will,

and yet, did a brilliant job landing the aircraft.

That's an incredible show of airmanship.

The crew's actually excellent cockpit resource management

in the very difficult situation that occurred

after they hit the ridge line.

They cooperated, they didn't panic.

The way these two pilots worked together was--

was remarkable.

And one of the last things that's on the tape that kind

of really gives you a chill is-- is after they make the runway,

the first officer says--

God bless you. You made it.

This is an accident that probably is not well known

to a lot of people, and that's because the aircraft

was able to end up on a runway and nobody was killed.

NARRATOR: The captain's impressive recovery doesn't

make up for the crew's errors.

The NTSB's final report concludes

that the probable cause of this accident

was the crew flying below the minimum descent altitude

before they could see the runway.

We think, in essence, the main factor involved in--

in the accident was the fact that the pilots

did not monitor the altitudes they

were flying through correctly.

They-- they should have leveled off at a point,

and they simply did not do so.

NARRATOR: Following the accident,

American Airlines increased the MDA requirement by 100 feet

and visibility requirement by half

a mile for non-precision approaches to Bradley airport.

It's a lot of rain.

NARRATOR: The NTSB also recommends that in conditions

where pressure is falling rapidly,

controllers should issue altimeter setting updates

as frequently as possible.

The approach controller issues the current altimeter setting.

That didn't happen either.

Right?

What's important to understand, though,

in terms of responsibility is that the captain

is the final authority on the flight.

It's ultimately the captain's responsibility to ensure

the safety of the flight.

In this case, he did not ensure that he had the most

current altimeter setting.

This accident was important to me

because it was one of the few where nobody was killed,

nobody was hurt, and yet, the safety Board

came up with some pretty good recommendations

to mitigate some of the factors that existed.