American Airlines blames computer glitch

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American Airlines blames computer glitch for Colombia crash that killed 159

By KEN KAYE Sun-Sentinel Web-posted: 9:33 p.m. Apr. 17, 2000

For five years before American Airlines Flight 965 crashed near Cali, Colombia, a navigational software company secretly harbored information that could have prevented the disaster, the air carrier charges in a federal lawsuit. In opening arguments Monday in U.S. District Court in Miami, American attorneys said that Jeppesen Co., of Englewood, Colo., furnished the airline with a database that hid a critical checkpoint. As a result, the flight crew did not have direct access on their flight management computer to a radio beacon called "Rozo" near Cali's airport, said George Manfredi, American's attorney. He said that checkpoint should have been displayed when the pilots hit the letter "R" on their cockpit computer keyboard. Instead, they received a menu of 12 other beacons. They selected the closest one, which turned out to be a radio fix named "Romeo" 130 miles away near Bogota. Unknown to the pilots, their twin-engine Boeing 757, which had taken off from Miami, made a gradual turn into a 9,000-foot mountain, killing 159 of the 163 on board in December 1995. "That 'R' was hidden in another file," Manfredi told 12 jurors, who could spend up to three months hearing the case. "It put Flight 965 in jeopardy and it made the crew in the last three minutes of their lives make errors." American also sued Honeywell International Inc., of Phoenix, the company that made the plane's flight management computer. The Fort Worth-based carrier's lawsuit says the two firms had the ability to fix the database problem and warn the airline well in advance of the accident. The lawsuit seeks to have Jeppesen and Honeywell share a percentage of the crash damages, which amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. The Colombian aviation authority blamed the pilots, Capt. Nicholas Tafuri and First Officer Don Williams, because they accepted a different runway assignment too late into the flight. That put them in a rush, leading to the crash. Manfredi said Jeppesen kept a secret list of 95 beacons, including Rozo, which presented navigational problems and could not be directly accessed on a flight management computer. Yet, Jeppesen managed to fix 23 of the beacons before the accident by linking them to nearby airports, he said. Both Jeppesen and Honeywell say Rozo was available by punching in its full name, as required by American's pilot training manual. But Tafuri and Williams just tapped the letter 'R' because they were in a hurry to get on the ground, they said. The plane was two hours late taking off from Miami. Further, the pilots failed to verify they had the correct radio beacon using longitude and latitude coordinates, said Richard Dunn, the attorney representing Honeywell. He said the pilots could have programmed their plane to automatically approach the airport, but instead turned their flight computer off. Worst of all, the pilots continued their descent, even though they had become confused and lost, said Mike Nachwalter, the attorney representing Jeppesen. For example, the pilots failed to find a radio checkpoint called Tulua, which is crucial because it is the gateway to the deep valley, he said. "They were taking shortcuts all the way down to make up time," he said.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,30000000000116834,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 18, 2000


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