Original subtitles

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Ladies and gentlemen,

we are starting our approach.

PILOT: We lost both engines.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: --the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

PILOT: Mayday, Mayday.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Brace for impact.

INVESTIGATOR 1: This is a nasty one.

INVESTIGATOR 2: Investigation starting ..

MAN 1: It's going to crash.

I can't see anything.

Damn, we're off course.

No, I can't see it.

We're way off.

On June 1, 1999, as an American Airlines jet prepared to land

amidst fierce thunderstorms, passengers knew

they were flying into trouble.

NEEDS ID: I don't know what made me

aware, so doggone aware, that we were going to have a problem.

Oh, no.

NARRATOR: Within minutes, their worst fears would be realized.

Other one.

Other one, other one, other one.

COPILOT: Hold on.

I'm yelling, get away from the plane.

Run.

Get away from the plane.

EMT (OVER RADIO): Yeah, I don't know where we're at.

But there's a road that goes around the airport.

But we've got a lot of people hurt.

NARRATOR: This is the story of a tragic and avoidable disaster.

The investigation would reveal a lethal combination of pilot

error, the devastating effects of severe weather,

and a dangerous race to keep the plane on schedule.

It will also uncover disturbing evidence

of an industry-wide failing.

Despite reliable aircraft and extensive training,

modern airlines and their crews face unprecedented pressures.

For a large operator like American Airlines,

the pressures start with the complex task

of scheduling their vast fleet.

Dispatchers direct the planes around the world in a

carefully-choreographed dance.

The strain of maintaining this efficiency

affects the entire system.

GREGORY FEITH: Of course, competition

has become very intense, a lot of pressure on the dispatchers,

pilots, flight attendants, and basically

the whole infrastructure, to accomplish the mission

and make a dollar.

NARRATOR: Every effort is made to ensure that nothing disrupts

these fragile schedules.

But there is one variable that no airline

can control, the weather.

On June 1, 1999, American Airlines Flight 1420

is running late.

It's the movement of the storms.

Everything is sliding to the Southeast.

So yes, we do have a stormy evening headed our way.

NARRATOR: The delay of Flight 1420

put pressure on the pilots even before takeoff.

The responsibility can fall on flight crews

to keep a tight schedule on track.

Dispatch please.

Yeah, it's Michael Argo.

NARRATOR: Crews have strict legal limits

on their duty time.

The first officer warned the dispatcher

that they were in danger of running out of time.

--time limit at around 11:16.

NARRATOR: The flight had to take off in the next hour

or be canceled.

The pilots also became aware of another pressure

caused by deteriorating weather near their destination.

I mean, well, we've got this whole situation.

DON EICK: Pilots had a weather briefing

that they got before they departed

Dallas-Fort Worth, which provided the forecasts,

the weather alerts.

The dispatcher and the captain preparing for the flight

looked at the weather information

and thought they could get to Little Rock

before the thunderstorms impacted.

NARRATOR: The 139 passengers just wanted to get home.

I was traveling with my son and my daughter.

We were coming home from our vacation.

It was my daughter's first flight.

The plane was late and there were

a lot of delays, of course.

It was tiring.

It was frustrating.

It was late at night.

NARRATOR: Finally, over two hours behind schedule,

Flight 1420 leaves Dallas.

Unknown to the crew, the storms are already

massing around Little Rock.

40 minutes later, 1420 is 100 miles from its destination.

At this point, the voice-recorder transcript

reveals a calm and steady cockpit routine.

DISPTACHER (OVER RADIO): American 1420, you're

going to still want lower.

So far it's OK.

So far, so good, Ma'am.

American 1420 will let you know.

GREGORY FEITH: The first officer on American 1420

was a new hire.

He had just recently completed training.

And he had been paired on one of his first trips

with this management captain.

So now you had a very experienced pilot sitting

in the left seat, with the company, paired

with a relatively new hire.

NARRATOR: The pilots are keeping a close eye on the storms

ahead.

On-board weather radar scans a cone-shaped area of sky

in front of the plane.

Potentially-severe storms show up in red.

There's your big what diddly.

Yeah, we've got to get over there real quick.

I don't like that.

That's lightning.

Sure is.

NARRATOR: The American Airlines dispatcher

issues an update on the shape and formation

of the thunderstorms.

GREGORY FEITH: The dispatcher gave this flight

crew the weather information.

It appeared to him that there was going to be a gap,

or what he called the bowling alley, where you had two types

of thunderstorms or two thunderstorms

with an alley between it, and that the flight crew, if they

had expedited their travel to Little Rock,

could probably make it up that alley

before the two storms closed together.

NARRATOR: But as Flight 1420 descends,

the plan to beat the storms is about to go seriously wrong.

The pilots do not realize that the walls of the bowling alley

are closing in.

With 80 miles to go, the path to Little Rock

still appears to be clear.

This is the bowling alley, right here.

COPILOT: Yeah, I know.

PILOT: In fact, there are the city lights, straight there.

COPILOT: You want to go down?

PILOT: Not yet, but pretty soon.

American Airlines--

The lightning seem to be on both sides of the plane.

It lit up the inside of the plane.

Very quick, you know, just kaboom-type lightning,

which was a little scary.

NARRATOR: Transcripts of a cockpit voice recordings show

that as the plane descends, the pilots are

aware of rough weather ahead.

Descent checks complete.

We've got to get there quick.

NARRATOR: As they prepare for landing,

the pressure on the pilots will now steadily rack up.

--not required.

Manual brakes?

Manual is fine.

NARRATOR: At first, as the crew pick

their way around the storms, everything seems steady.

Yeah, actually, there's a city right there.

Yeah.

Breaking through this crowd.

Good, doing good.

NARRATOR: Even when the first indication

comes that the storms are advancing,

the pilots take it in stride.

Whoa, it looks like it's moving this way, though.

Yeah.

Just some lightning straight ahead.

I think we're going to be OK, though, right there.

Yeah.

Right down the bowling alley.

NARRATOR: But when pilots contact the controller

at Little Rock, he gives the first of a series

of alarming weather alerts.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): We've got a thunderstorm just

Northwest of the airport, moving through the area now.

The wind is to 280 at 28, gusts 44.

And I'll have new weather for you in just a moment, I'm sure.

NARRATOR: Gale-force winds are gusting

at up to 50 miles per hour, enough

to blow tiles of a rooftop.

High winds pose a severe hazard for flight 1420.

Crosswinds could make it difficult to control

the plane on landing.

The pilots must quickly determine

if they're within safe limits.

They calculate the strength of the crosswind from its angle

to their final approach.

The crosswind limit for landing is 30 knots on a dry runway.

But

Buschmann and Origel now become confused

about what happens if it rains.

Well, 30 knots is the crosswind limitation.

But see, 30 knots, but wet--

That's the dry.

PILOT: Yeah, dry.

What's the wet?

20.

It's 25.

NARRATOR: The discussion is never resolved

and the cross winds will soon be gusting well over the limit.

PILOT (OVER INTERCOM): Flight attendants,

prepare for landing, please.

NARRATOR: The pilot's attention now returns

to the bad weather ahead.

But the task of tracking the shifting storms

is made more difficult by the lack of sophisticated radar

at Little Rock.

American 1420, your equipment's

a lot better than what I have.

How's that final for 22-F looking?

What's that?

We can see the airport but we can just barely make it out.

We should be able to make to 22.

That storm is moving closer, like your radar says.

But it's a little farther off than you thought.

The controllers are going, well, your radar is

better than mine and so forth.

The controller in this accident had a monochromatic,

or basically almost a black-and-white set of a radar

and could not determine the intensities of the storm.

NARRATOR: Just eight miles from the airport,

the pilots now face another key decision, how to approach

the runway through bad weather.

Controllers routinely ask pilots if they want to land visually

instead of relying on the airport's electronic Instrument

Landing System or ILS.

But a visual approach means they must be able to see the runway.

And this is proving difficult.

No, we can't really make it out right now.

We're going to have to stay with you as long as possible.

NARRATOR: Now as the wind suddenly changes direction,

the pilots problems quickly mount up.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): And the winds kind of kicked

around a little bit right now.

It's 330 at 11.

Whoa.

That's a little better than it was.

Yet 330 is the tailwind, though.

NARRATOR: The crew now faces the problem

of having the wind behind them when they land,

greatly increasing the dangers of overshooting the runway.

Then the controller calls in with more bad news.

Right now I have a wind-shear alert.

NARRATOR: Wind shear is a sudden change of wind direction

over a short distance.

It is one of the most feared elements

of a severe thunderstorm.

To combat constantly-shifting winds,

the pilots are forced to throw away their previous approach

plans and start again.

They have to reverse the direction of their approach

so they will be landing into the wind.

Yeah, we're going to need--

or we would rather go into the headwind, Sir.

NARRATOR: The pilot's decision to land

in the opposite direction is a prudent move.

But it will create serious problems.

turn to their new approach, the aircraft's weather radar,

which scans in front of the plane,

loses track of the thunderstorms.

Worse still, the turn delays landing

by more than 10 minutes.

And with every passing moment, the storms

are growing in intensity.

Runway Four Right, 111.3042, I think--

I think that was the airport below us.

PILOT: Yeah, right.

OK.

NARRATOR: Switching runways and keeping track of the storms

all adding greatly to the pilot's heavy workload.

Airline pilots, they make their money when they're

flying into bad weather.

When the weather goes down, now all of a sudden,

the workload starts to increase because you

have to factor in low clouds, rain,

lightning, thunderstorms, wind.

All of these elements start to bombard you, the closer you get

into the airport environment.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): American 1420,

it appears we have a second part of this storm moving through.

The wind, now, is 340 at 16, gusts 34.

NARRATOR: With the storms worsening,

the pilots need to make it to the airport

as quickly as possible.

Do you want to accept the short approach, keep it tight?

Yeah, but if you can see the runway

because I don't quite see it.

Yeah, it's-- it's right there. PILOT: All right.

You see it?

PILOT: You just point me in the right direction.

I'll start slowing down.

Give me flaps 11.

PILOT (OVER RADIO) Damn, it's heading right over the field.

American 1420, did you call me?

Yeah, we got the airport.

But we're going right in between clouds.

I think it's to my right, off my 3 o'clock low,

about four miles.

American 1420, that's it.

Do you want to shoot the visual approach

you want to go out for the ILS?

NARRATOR: A visual approach will allow 1420

to reach the airport faster than one

that depends on instruments.

Well, yeah, I can start the visual if we can do it.

American 1420s cleared, visual approach, runway 4-Right.

If you lose it, need some help, let me know, please.

NARRATOR: But a visual approach means

the pilots must keep the runway in sight at all times.

The transcripts now reveal rising confusion of the flight

deck as the captain struggles to fix

the position of the airport.

OK, did you notice something?

Did you see the airport there?

Where?

There, OK.

You're on a base for it, OK?

It's right there.

PILOT: Well I'm on a base now?

It's like a dogleg.

We're coming in and-- and there it is, right there.

PILOT: I lost it.

NARRATOR: The pilots now have to abandon

their direct visual approach and request help from Little Rock's

Instrument Landing System.

But this delays landing even further.

Approach American 1420.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): American 1420, yes, Sir?

Yeah, there's a cloud between us and the airport

and we've lost the field.

We're on a vector.

Well basically, we're on the last vector you gave us,

which is like a dogleg, it looks like.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): American

1420, can you fly heading 220?

I'll take you up for the ILS.

NARRATOR: This news footage shows the storm

on the night of the crash.

As heavy rain cuts visibility even further,

Captain Buschmann becomes frustrated.

PILOT: See, I hate droning around

visual, at night in weather without having

any clue where we are.

RANDY HILL: The thing that was really getting to me

was I knew we were getting very low.

I knew that the rain was not letting up

and that we were being jolted around quite heavily.

See how we're going right in the middle of this crap.

Right.

Approach, American 1420.

I know you're doing your best, Sir,

but we're getting really close to this storm.

And we'll keep it really tight if we have to.

NARRATOR: Four minutes from touchdown, severe thunderstorms

give the pilots another major problem.

Blinding rain and thick clouds are obscuring the airfield.

The visibility on the runway, known as RVR,

is getting dangerously low.

We're going right into this.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): American 1420, right now we

have heavy rain on the airport.

I don't have new weather for you.

But visibility is less than a mile.

And the runway 4-Right RVR is 3,000.

NARRATOR: Visibility is down to 3,000 feet.

Can we land?

030 at 45 American 1420.

3,000 RVR, we can't land on that.

No 3,000 if you--

PILOT: What do we need?

No it's 2,400 RVR.

OK, right.

Yeah, we're fine.

All right, 15, and landing gear down.

And lights, please.

RENEE SALMANS: As we descended, we descended through a very

dark, black cloud.

The rain seemed to be going horizontal.

NARRATOR: The cross winds are way over the limit.

The pilots could divert to another airport.

But they don't, even as the weather gets worse.

Wind-shear alert, center field wind, 350 at 32, gusts 45,

north boundary wind 310 at 29, Northeast

boundary wind 320 at 32.

The jolts seemed to be much stronger than I'd ever felt.

You could tell that the thunderheads were

extremely close to the plane.

I said words to the effect that, if he tries to land

in this weather, we'll crash.

Flaps 28?

Add 20.

NARRATOR: Then visibility falls drastically below the limit.

American 1420, the runway Four Right RVR is now 1,600.

Damn.

NARRATOR: The crew are rattled.

Under pressure, they begin to make mistakes.

I can't see anything.

Looking for 460.

COPILOT: It's there.

MARK SCHMIDT: Couldn't see anything.

The wind was throwing the plane around so violently.

I think it was enough of a crosswind

that I was afraid we were going to land on the wing.

We felt like were going to tip over.

I mean, it just felt that bad.

You want 40 flaps?

Yeah, I thought I called it.

I knew, the way he was jockeying the plane

and the sounds of the engines, that he was trying

to get lined up for the runway.

And I couldn't see it.

I couldn't see it.

But I could tell we were close.

And I kept thinking, where's the runway?

Wind is 330 at 28.

PILOT: I'm going to stay above it a little.

There's a runway up to your right.

You got it? - No.

COPILOT: I got the runway in sight.

You're right on course. PILOT: I got it.

- Stay where you are. - I got it.

I got it.

MARK SCHMIDT: Most of the people at that point, in the plane,

were just holding on really tight, just looking forward,

I mean, like rigid.

I suspected the worst.

I mean, I really did.

We might not get down.

Flight 1420 is about to land at Little Rock Airport.

Low visibility and high winds make

the final approach treacherous.

Wind 330 at 25.

500 feet.

Plus 20.

CONTROLLER (OVER RADIO): Winds 330 at 23.

Damn, we're off course.

No, I can't see it.

We're way off.

I can't see anything.

Got it?

Got it.

COPILOT: 100 feet, 50 feet, 40, 30, 20, 10,

We hit the runway real hard.

We didn't slow down.

COPILOT: We're down.

We're sliding.

Oh, no.

RANDY HILL: We were still going very, very, very fast.

And at that point, I thought, we're dead.

On the brakes.

PASSENGER: Help me.

MARK SCHMIDT: It was just chaos.

It was terrifying, quite literally, terrifying.

Other one.

PILOT: Other one, other one.

RANDY HILL: When the plane actually stopped,

there was a moment of absolute, total silence.

RENEE SALMANS: There was fire in front of me.

And I could see debris.

And it was silent.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, I'm dead.

MARK SCHMIDT: Well, I knew we were in deep trouble.

You know, it's a process that started in some way.

It's got to end. It's going to end.

And when it ends, how do I get out of here?

RENEE SALMANS: Within those minutes,

I heard a small scream.

And I heard it get louder and louder and louder,

like it was on a megaphone.

And it hit me, that's my daughter.

And it's like, oh, OK, we got to get out of here, you know,

we got to do something.

NARRATOR: The passengers struggled to get out

before fire engulfed the cabin.

MARK SCHMIDT: I had a broken scapula,

a dislocated shoulder, and cracked ribs,

and all sorts of stuff going on.

But I didn't feel a thing.

I just wanted to get out.

I was not going to die in that thing.

I got out of that plane, probably, in 10 seconds.

I'm yelling, get away from the plane,

run, get away from the plane, go, go, go.

Some folks looked like they'd been in an explosion.

Their clothes were tattered.

I saw a man using his cell phone to call for help.

EMT (OVER RADIO): OK, I don't know where we're at.

But there's a road that goes around the airport.

Well, we got a lot of people hurt.

NARRATOR: Traveling at over 100 miles an hour,

the aircraft ran off the end of the runway,

plowed down a 25-foot embankment,

and slammed into a steel walkway.

The plane was ripped into several pieces.

The wreckage finally came to rest on the muddy banks

of the Arkansas River.

10 passengers died in the crash.

Captain Bushman was killed instantly

when the cockpit was split open by the steel walkway.

It was a shame I hadn't-- literally, a shame, that I had

not done more to save people.

That's the worst nightmare I have.

NARRATOR: The US National Transportation Safety

Board was immediately notified.

Greg Feith was NTSB's chief investigator.

The night American 1420 happened,

I received a phone call about 1 o'clock in the morning,

from our communications center at the NTSB,

advising that there had been an aircraft

accident at Little Rock and there may

be some fatalities involved.

NARRATOR: Fellow investigator, Don Eick,

was quickly on the scene.

There's a sense of adrenaline as an accident

occurs like this, where you're being

launched to the accident scene.

And there's a strong urge to get there to try to find out what

happened, to document the facts so we

can prevent it from happening.

NARRATOR: The NTSB set up a command

center close to the site.

They would spend the next 18 months

piecing together the events that led to the crash.

GREGORY FEITH: We did have a basic idea, when we got

on scene, of what had happened.

We just didn't know why.

We knew the airplane went off the end of the runway.

We knew that the pilots couldn't stop it.

We knew that the aircraft was destroyed

going through this catwalk.

We knew that the subsequent post-crash fire killed people.

We just didn't why at that point.

NARRATOR: The NTSB worked backwards from the impact,

piecing together the sequence of events

from the final approach, all the way back to Dallas-Fort Worth.

The first question for investigators

was why the pilots had been unable to stop the plane.

Analysis of the tire tracks left by the skidding plane

showed a complete loss of control after touchdown.

GREGORY FEITH: When you look at the width of those tire tracks,

you then see that the airplane wasn't going straight,

but in fact, it was sliding sideways.

Here you have this machine that weighs 130, 140,000 pounds.

It has 100 or so people on it.

It is sliding, uncontrolled, off to this runway.

NARRATOR: Something had gone terribly wrong on landing

and investigators had to find out why.

They questioned the survivors of Flight 1420,

who would provide an extremely important clue.

The NTSB investigators needed to find

out why Flight 1420 had slid, uncontrolled, off the runway.

They set out to interview surviving passengers--

--many of whom were local to Little Rock.

Their eyewitness testimony would point the inquiry

towards the most important mechanical system used to slow

a plane down after landing.

We were really interested in, were those passengers that were

sitting in a position right near the wings, who could look out

the windows and tell us whether they

saw the ground spoilers deploy.

NARRATOR: Spoilers are large flaps that

flip up on landing, literally spoiling

the airflow over the wings.

This prevents them from giving lift

and allows braking to take effect.

Crucially, none of the passengers

saw the spoilers deploy.

To check their testimony, the NTSB

examined information from the airplane's black boxes.

The flight data recorder, which monitors the systems on board

during flight, confirmed that the spoilers

had failed to deploy.

The implications were catastrophic.

Flight 1420 had no hope of stopping in time.

COPILOT: On the brakes.

We're sliding.

PILOT: Oh, no.

NARRATOR: So was the failure of the spoilers

to deploy a mechanical problem?

Or in the confusion of final approach, was it pilot error?

To find out, the NTSB would make clever use of the Cockpit Voice

Recorder, or CVR.

PILOT (ON CVR): --just barely make it out.

(ON FAST FORWARD) Sliding ..

COPILOT (ON CVR): You want 40 flaps?

PILOT (ON CVR): Yeah, I thought I called it.

GREGORY FEITH: One of the key elements

that the CVR team was listening for was the setting

of the spoiler handle.

We saw, on the flight data recorder,

that the ground spoilers didn't deploy.

We wanted to know if the handle had been actually armed or not.

And we were looking for a specific click sound.

We couldn't find that sound on the accident CVR, which led us

to believe that the handle was never in the armed position

at touchdown.

NARRATOR: Intensely busy in the cockpit, the pilot simply

forgot to arm the spoilers.

Have they deployed, the MD-80 aircraft might have overshot

the runway, but it would have stopped

before hitting the catwalk.

The pilots had made serious and ultimately, fatal errors.

But investigators wanted to know why.

They suspected that pressures earlier in the flight

led to these mistakes.

They turned their attention to the weather.

It was clear to us that severe weather had been in the area

around the time of the accident.

How it played a part was one of the things

we had to try to discover.

And putting the radar images in, the observations,

trying to put it all together, would take weeks, of course,

to get this information done.

NARRATOR: The NTSB wanted to know what role the weather had

played in the crash, and had the pilots been

fully aware of the dangers.

See how we're going right in the middle of this crap.

GREGORY FEITH: One of the concerns that all pilots have,

when they're trying to land an aircraft,

is of course, making sure that the crosswinds that they may

experience don't exceed the capabilities

of either themselves or the aircraft.

The winds now, 350 at 30 45.

Can we land?

This particular flight crew had

a limitation not imposed by themselves,

but imposed by the company.

And that they were not allowed to exceed a 10-knot crosswind

on a wet runway.

NARRATOR: Crosswind limitations are clearly

stated in the operating manual.

The crew of 1420 were flying beyond regulation limits.

The effect of the winds can be seen in this NTSB animation,

showing the captain's desperate last maneuvers.

DON EICK: Winds definitely impacted the flight.

If you look at the animation, you'll

see him fighting the winds.

Definitely not good.

COPILOT (ON CVR): We're down.

On the brakes.

PILOT: Other one, other one. COPILOT: Other one.

DON EICK: But when you start talking

about wet runway, thunderstorms, not a good scenario.

NARRATOR: But we're the crew of 1420 aware of the hazards

posed by the severe weather?

For the NTSB, previous accidents had made the dangers

of thunderstorms all too clear.

In 1994, a US Air DC-9 fell victim to wind

shear in North Carolina.

The plane stalled at 250 feet and fell from the sky.

A Delta TriStar crashed after flying into the most

severe kind of wind shear that created

an intense downdraft of air.

So should the crew of 1420 have aborted the approach?

This NTSB weather animation overlays

the path of the aircraft with ground

radar images of the storm.

Bushman and Origel landed in lightning,

torrential rain, and hail, and the cross winds

gusting well over the limit.

DON EICK: Based on the information that we had

from ground-based weather radar, the flight crew of 1420

should have been seeing majority of that storm.

They would have been seeing the leading

edge going green, rapidly changing

the yellow, to bright red.

I can't see anything.

Looking for a 460.

GREGORY FEITH: As they progressed towards Little Rock,

they started to paint the bad weather, not only

their on-board radar, but they could

see, out the window, lightning.

And one of the key statements that this captain made,

which basically summarized the entire flight,

was the captain saying, I hate droning around

visual at night, in weather, without having

any clue where we are.

I hate droning around at night when I don't know where I am.

That was such a key statement.

It was at that point, by an experienced,

10,000-hour captain, that he should have abandoned

the approach going into Little Rock

and either gone to his alternate or made his way back to Dallas.

But to make a statement like that

and then continue an approach to an airport, where you have

a thunderstorm in progress over the airport,

is a recipe for disaster.

NARRATOR: But the pilots were not the only ones

to be heavily criticized.

As the investigation continued, American Airlines flight policy

would come under fire.

And an industry-wide scandal was about to be exposed.

the NTSB dug deeper into the circumstances

surrounding the accident.

The question was, who would take responsibility?

American Airlines was reluctant to admit

that their pilots had knowingly flown

into a severe thunderstorm.

Initially, they tried to pin the blame on the controller

at Little Rock.

American started legal action against the authorities

responsible for airport controllers.

American's lawyers claimed that the crew of Flight 1420

had not been given all current weather information.

American 1420, your equipment's

a lot better than what I have.

How's that final for 22F looking?

NARRATOR: But after interviewing the controller at Little Rock,

investigators were unconvinced.

It's highly unlikely that the flight crew wasn't sufficiently

informed about the nature of the weather

and the severity of the weather, not only en route,

but of course, during the course of the landing at Little Rock.

NARRATOR: The focus turned back on the pilots.

Lawyers representing the passengers

were determined to get American Airlines to accept

liability for the crash.

I mean, it is about money, in a way,

because you want to make them pay because I saw the letters

that they would write back to my lawyer,

minimizing what we had been through,

minimizing my daughter's burns, cuts, the psychological effects

that had on my son, at age 15, and my daughter and me,

and just minimizing everything.

So you want to find a way to hurt them.

NARRATOR: Renee Salmans and many other survivors

attended the NTSB public hearings

held in Little Rock, eight months after the disaster.

With the captain dead, the copilot

was the first to testify.

As we went off the end of the runway,

I could see the runway lights coming up.

And I knew we were going off the end of the runway.

I couldn't see anything in front of us.

All I thought was, the gear would collapse

and we would continue to slide.

It's got to be OK.

And then all of a sudden, I felt the impact.

Well, I followed it as close as I could.

You bet.

I wanted to know what happened.

I went to all of the NTSB hearings.

I was outraged.

I was mad.

For me, they didn't ask him the right questions, you know?

I wanted to ask him, what were you thinking?

Why did you all play chicken with our lives?

NARRATOR: The co-pilot's testimony

was highly controversial.

In his account of the final moments of the flight,

he claims to have told the captain to abort the approach,

otherwise known as a go around.

OFFICIAL: Who can call for abandoning the approach?

Either pilot.

OFFICIAL: Did you call for a go around at any time?

MICHAEL ORIGEL: Yes, Sir, I did.

It sounds like, after reviewing the tape,

you can definitely hear the go.

And the around, it seems like he talked the same time I did.

And I looked over at him.

And he brought the airplane back on course.

NARRATOR: However, when NTSB specialists

studied the cockpit voice tapes, they

couldn't hear this statement.

PILOT (ON CVR): Damn, we're off course.

No, I can't see it.

We're way off.

Even though he stood by that statement,

we could never validate it.

That led to a controversial finding

because we weren't really sure if that took place or not.

NARRATOR: The NTSB asked the copilot tough questions.

But was American Airlines training also at fault?

Greg Feith put an American Airlines manager on the stand.

What were the rules for pilots flying near thunderstorms?

GREGORY FEITH: When asked the question,

he basically responded that he just

didn't want his pilots flying into that type of weather.

Our pilots are forbidden to enter or depart a terminal area

blanketed by thunderstorms.

NARRATOR: To the NTSB, this policy simply wasn't clear

cut enough.

Well, that's a very subjective call for a pilot.

Pilots need boundaries.

You have to set limits.

If there's convective activity, that is thunderstorm activity,

it's within five nautical miles of the airport,

there's lightning, there's wind shear, don't go there.

NARRATOR: The deeper they looked,

the more the NTSB found that flying into thunderstorms

was disturbingly widespread.

Extraordinary evidence given at the hearings

reveal that the problem spread through the whole industry.

Expert analysts from MIT spent weeks

recording the flight paths of planes landing

at Dallas-Fort Worth.

They waited for thunderstorms and watched how pilots reacted.

Their animation plots the planes coming

in to land, overlaid with radar images of the storms.

Anything yellow or orange is a potentially-severe

thunderstorm.

Of the 2000 encounters with thunderstorms,

two out of three pilots flew into the storm

and landed their aircraft.

GREGORY FEITH: I was very surprised by the testimony

at the public hearing.

Given the fact that they're flying the best equipment,

typically have the best training, have the best

information available to them, for those decisions

to be made to continue into harm's way,

it was very surprising to me that they tried to do that.

Pilots know that if we go into that thunderstorm,

we may not come out of that thunderstorm.

And if we do, it may not be, basically, in one piece.

NARRATOR: Why did so many pilots fly into danger?

The MIT researchers found pilots were more reckless if they were

behind schedule, if it was night,

and if aircraft in front of them were

also flying into bad weather.

DON EICK: In the Little Rock case,

two of those three elements were present.

It was night and they were running late.

NARRATOR: The MIT investigation was chilling evidence

that the crash at Little Rock was

part of a much wider problem.

We're not seeing a major improvement, to put it baldly.

There's a limited time for training.

Weather was a significant part that set

up the stage of this accident.

We do not condone any operation to be

conducted in such weather.

It is a known severe-weather hazard.

And it should have been suspended, no operation.

NARRATOR: Ironically, it also emerged

that new technology may be partly to blame

for bad decision making.

DON EICK: Might it be we're desensitizing pilots?

We're putting weather radar on board aircraft.

We're putting wind-shear detection systems on airplanes.

Most of these systems only react when you're in the hazard.

That time, it may be too late.

NARRATOR: The root causes behind the crash of 1420

went even deeper.

Why were the pilots so determined to land?

Greg Feith found the answer, back at Dallas-Forth Worth,

before the flight even left the ground.

There, he found signs of a deadly condition in aviation

known as, "get-there-itis."

GREGORY FEITH: There may have been a sense of get-there-itis.

The flight crew knew that they were

pushing their 14-hour duty day.

It had been a long duty day.

The airport's right there.

Let's try it.

Let's see if we can accomplish the mission.

Pilots are goal oriented.

We're mission oriented.

We will stick our nose in there to try and see if we

can accomplish the mission.

Sometimes we will accomplish that mission.

But sometimes we get too far into it that we can't bail out,

we don't have any more options, and bad things happen.

NARRATOR: For Flight 1420, the pressures of get-there-itis

sparked a fatal series of mistakes and misjudgments.

--460-- 60

NARRATOR: At the end of a long day, rushing to beat the storms

and get the passengers to their destination, the crew of 1420

made a basic mistake that cost 11 people their lives.

They forgot to arm the spoilers.

MARK SCHMIDT: They were so busy trying

to get the plane on the ground that they forgot

to do what they needed to do.

They didn't have time to do it.

NARRATOR: After the accident, American Airlines revised

their checklist procedures.

Both pilots must now confirm that the spoilers

are armed, ready for landing.

In October, 2001, the NTSB published their report.

They concluded that the two main causes of the crash

were first, the decision to land in a thunderstorm,

and second, the pilot's failure to arm the spoilers.

American Airlines declined to take part in this program

or comment on the findings.

As an investigator, I had over two years

to basically criticize, and determine what the captain

was trying to accomplish.

That particular captain had seconds to make decisions,

based on the information he was getting.

And while it's unfair for an accident investigator

like myself to start pointing the finger, I wasn't there.

They'd got nothing but flak.

You can understand it.

But I can't understand a person wanting to kill himself either.

We've been out and visited his grave at the Air Force Academy

a couple, three times.

And the guy just got caught up in a bad, bad situation.

I mean, been there, done that.

NARRATOR: One year after the crash, the survivors

of Flight 1420 gathered at the site

to remember those who died.

For surviving passengers, the effects of the crash

are long lasting and profound.

RENEE SALMANS: We, as a family, worked long and hard to work

through it.

We had many talks.

It blew apart a lot of relationships.

You find out who your real friends are.

SURVIVOR: The impact of the crash

is something that I try to block out of my mind

because I still feel a reaction.

MARK SCHMIDT: People ask me if I'm OK.

Well, no, I'm not OK.

No, we'll never be OK.

I mean, what is this OK stuff?

You're different.

And deal with it.

I mean, that's the way we're going to be.