1985 жылғы авиакатастрофа: Delta Flight 191 трагедиясы

1985 aviation accident

The aircraft was a Lockheed L 1011 385 1 TriStar (registration number N726DA). It was delivered to Delta on February 28, 1979, and had operated continuously since then.

The crew consisted of three flight crew members, and eight cabin crew members. Of the 11 crew members, only three flight attendants survived. Fellow Delta employees described him as "observant, alert, and professional". The NTSB report lists 126 passenger fatalities rather than 128, but notes that two of the passengers listed as survivors died more than 30 days after the crash, on September 13 and October 4, 1985. Of the dead, 73 originated from the Miami metropolitan area; 45 were from Broward County, 19 were from Palm Beach County, and 9 were from Dade County. One of the passengers was Don Estridge, known to the world as the father of the IBM PC; he died aboard the flight along with his wife. Two IBM summer interns, four IBM employees from the IBM branch office in Burbank, California, and six additional family members of IBM employees also perished.

Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, with a scheduled stop at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The flight departed Fort Lauderdale on an instrument flight rules flight plan at 14:10 Central Daylight Time (UTC−05:00). efn|name="time footnote"|The NTSB report describes Flight 191 as departing Fort Lauderdale at 15:10 Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−04:00). All other times given in the NTSB report are in Central Daylight Time (UTC−05:00). Around the same time, the captain switched to the arrival radio frequency and informed the approach controller that they were flying at 5000 feet (1524 m). The controller replied that the flight should expect to approach Runway 17L (later named 17C). At 18:00:36, the approach controller asked an American Airlines flight that was two aircraft ahead of Flight 191, and on the same approach, if they could see the airport. The captain called out that they were at 1000 feet (305 m) at 18:05:05. Fourteen seconds later, he cautioned Price to watch his airspeed. At the same time, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured the beginning of a sound identified as rain hitting the cockpit. From this point, the aircraft began a descent from which it never recovered. The angle of attack (AOA) was over 30° and began to vary wildly over the next few seconds. At 18:05:44, with the aircraft descending at more than The aircraft's left engine hit a 1971 Toyota Celica driven by 28 year old William Mayberry, killing him instantly. The cockpit and passenger section forward of seat row 34 had been completely fragmented by impact with the water tanks and post crash fires; all but eight of the occupants in this section were killed. The remainder of the surviving passengers and crew were in the rear cabin and tail section, which separated relatively intact and landed on its side in an open field, and most of these were in the center and right portions of the fuselage from seat row 40 rearwards.

Numerous public safety agencies responded to the crash, including the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Department of Public Safety, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Irving Fire Department, the Irving Police Department, and all available third watch personnel from the Dallas Police Department's Northwest Patrol Division and the Northeastern Sector of the Fort Worth Police Department's Patrol Division. After a long investigation, the NTSB deemed the cause of the crash to be attributable to pilot error (for their decision to fly through a thunderstorm), combined with extreme weather phenomena associated with microburst induced wind shear. The NTSB also determined that a lack of specific training, policies, and procedures for avoiding and escaping low altitude wind shear was a contributing factor. The NTSB was also critical of the airport for failing to notify emergency services in surrounding municipalities in a timely manner. While the airport's on site emergency services were notified almost immediately, the DFW Department of Public Safety (DPS) Communications Center did not begin notifying off site emergency services until nearly 10 minutes after the crash and did not finish its notifications until 45 minutes after the crash. During notifications, DPS also failed to request ambulances from the adjacent communities of Irving, Grapevine, and Hurst; however, Hurst responded with ambulances after personnel at its ambulance company overheard the airport crash report on a radio frequency scanner. The NTSB concluded that the overall emergency response was effective due to the rapid response of on airport personnel, but found "several problem areas" which under different circumstances "could affect adversely the medical treatment and survival of accident victims at the airport". Based on the improved response times, the NTSB issued a Safety Recommendation on January 9, 1990, calling for airport executives nationwide to consider the benefits of using automated voice notification systems for their emergency aid notifications. Pilots were also required to train to react to microbursts and to quickly take evasive action in order to safely land the plane.

The Delta Flight 191 crash resulted in the longest aviation trial in American history, lasting 14 months from 1988 to 1989 and presided over by Federal Judge David Owen Belew Jr. of the Northern District of Texas. The trial featured the first use of computer graphic animation as substantive evidence in federal court. While the use of such animation later became routine, its use in the Flight 191 litigation was sufficiently novel that it became the cover story of the December 1989 ABA Journal, the magazine of the American Bar Association. Preparing the animated video for trial cost the Department of Justice around $100,000 to $150,000 (inflation adjusted $100000.0 in 1989 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years to $150000.0 in 1989 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years), and required nearly two years of work. The Discovery Channel Canada/National Geographic television series Mayday dramatized the crash of Flight 191 in a season five episode titled "Invisible Killer". The crash was featured on an episode of When Weather Changed History and Why Planes Crash on The Weather Channel, and the episode "Deadly Weather" of Survival in the Sky on The Learning Channel. The crash was mentioned in the feature film Rain Man. Working as a reporter for the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun Sentinel in 1986, future renowned crime fiction author Michael Connelly and two other reporters conducted extensive interviews of survivors of Delta Flight 191 and wrote an article detailing their experiences during and after the crash. The article explored the topic of survivor guilt and earned Connelly and his co writers a finalist position for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ten years after the crash, survivors and family members of victims gathered in Florida to recognize the tenth anniversary of the crash. In 2010, 25 years after the accident, a memorial was installed at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport's Founders Plaza in Grapevine.