Decision to Land in Thunderstorm Likely to be Central Point of Crash Investigation Case bears similarities to other landing accidents in foul weather

Air Safety Week, June 7, 1999

In the end, Capt. Richard Buschmann's decision to land while his airplane was being drummed by hail from a howling thunderstorm cost him his life, and that of eight of his passengers.

Bad weather, and the specter of an awful misjudgment, are the main factors, even at this preliminary stage, of the nighttime June 1 crash of American Airlines [AMR] flight 1420 at Little Rock, Arkansas. In addition to the dead, four out of every seven of the 136 survivors was injured severely enough to wind up in one of seven local hospitals.

The accident breaks an 18-month streak of no fatal crashes in the US airline industry. The record was longer for American, which had not killed any of its passengers since the late 1995 controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident at Cali, Colombia. Earlier that year, an American MD-83 attempting a night landing in gusty winds and rain at Bradley International Airport (BDL) sliced through trees in East Granby, Conn. and hit short of the runway. In 1998 an American 727 was destroyed in a failed landing attempt at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD).

In these two cases, no one was killed. In the O'Hare case, the weather was half-mile visibility in freezing fog. At Bradley, the weather featured strong winds, moderate turbulence and, possibly, a low level windshear. Neither case, though, posed nearly the hazard of last week's event in Little Rock: a severe thunderstorm moving right over the runway.

The accident adds another stark chapter to the bloody history of approach and landing accidents. Our Contributing Editor Rudy Kapustin was the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) investigator-in-charge of the 1985 crash at Dallas/Ft. Worth of a Delta Air Lines [DAL] L-1011 that killed 136. "The Delta crew flew right into a dark thunderstorm cell with lightning," Kapustin recalled, citing the crew's comments on the cockpit voice recorder. Even though the death toll in last week's crash was less, the Little Rock case "may have been worse," Kapustin believes, in terms of the captain's decision to fly into what may have been an even more severe storm cell than the one that downed the Delta jet nearly 14 years ago. "The landing attempt was not prudent under those conditions," Kapustin declared.

To be sure, there is a great reluctance to indict the dead captain at this very preliminary stage of the postmortem, but even Cecil Ewell, American's chief pilot, revealed his doubts about Capt. Buschmann's decision to land at Little Rock instead of returning to Dallas/Ft. Worth or diverting to Nashville, Tenn. (there was sufficient fuel for either choice). "If someone told me there were 50-knot wind gusts at the airport, I would leave town," Ewell said at a press conference.

The investigation will take at least a year, but at this point it appears likely that it will span activities and decisions all the way from the cockpit to the corporate operations center. Based on what has been established, stated, and speculated upon thus far, here is a partial itemization of areas the investigation seems certain to cover:

* The decision to take off. At a tour last January of American's System Operations Control (SOC) center, company officials stressed that decisions to conduct a flight are made jointly by the captain and the dispatcher. Given the propensity for thunderstorms in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and throughout the southeastern region of the U.S. in the spring and summer, weather at both the departure and arrival airfields would clearly be a major factor. In this case, takeoff was delayed for more than 2 hours due to weather at Dallas. The extended delay meant a last-minute equipment change to the MD-80. While the captain bears ultimate responsibility, the dispatcher's role seems sure to be examined.

* The weather. What the crew knew about the weather, and when they knew it, play into the ultimate decision to conduct the flight. American operates a very sophisticated weather reporting system at its Dallas operations center. Indeed, the company is at the cutting edge of the industry, using some of the latest thunderstorm cell tracking technology available (see ASW, Jan. 18). "The general weather forecast should have provided enough information for all concerned to use extreme caution," Kapustin asserted.

A particularly violent line of thunderstorms was crossing Arkansas the night of the accident. At Little Rock, the National Weather Service (NWS) was reporting wind gusts in excess of 80 miles per hour, driving rain and significant lightning. On the NWS's standard 1-6 scale for measuring thunderstorm intensity, reports place the weather at the airport between level 5 and 6 ('intense' to 'extreme'), and closer to 6.

Robert Baker, American's executive vice president for operations, said the crew "had no way to measure wind at the surface of the runway." The airplane's weather radar, he explained, can detect precipitation, but not wind. "The crew is 100 percent dependent for wind direction and velocity on the tower," he said. However, others point out that when it comes to tracking thunderstorm cells, precipitation and strong winds tend to go hand-in-hand. The cockpit radar scope would display the heaviest precipitation in red (shown in that color to emphasize the danger and the need to avoid flying into the area). Investigators probably will endeavor to determine if Capt. Schumann was flying into the epicenter of an area glowing red on the weather radar scope (for illustrations of various thunderstorm patterns on the radar screen, see ASW, July 6, 1998).