Alaska Airlines Flight 261 ATC Recordings [Full Audio]

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Alaska Airlines Flight 261 departed Puerto Vallarta at about 14:30 PST for a flight to San Francisco and Seattle. En route to San Francisco a FL310 a problem arose with the stabilizer trim. At 16:10 the crew radioed Los Angeles ARTCC that they were having control problems and that they were descending through FL260. At 16:11 Los Angeles ARTCC asked the condition of the flight and were told that they were troubleshooting a jammed stabilizer. The crew requested, and were granted, a FL200-FL250 block altitude clearance. At 16:15 the crew were handed off to Los Angeles sector control. The Alaska Airlines crew reported problems maintaining their altitude and told their intentions to divert to Los Angeles International Airport. They were cleared to do so at 16:16. The crew then requested permission to descend to FL100 over water to change their aircraft configuration . Los Angeles cleared them to FL170. Last message from Flight 261 was when they requested another block altitude. The request was granted at 16:17, without a readback from the crew. During the descent the crew was also talking to Alaska Airlines maintenance personnel in Seattle and Los Angeles to troubleshoot their stabilizer trim problems. As the crew attempted to diagnose or correct the problem the out-of-trim condition became worse, causing a tendency for the plane to pitch nose-down. When preparing the plane for landing control was lost and the MD-83 was seen 'tumbling, spinning, nose down, continuous roll, corkscrewing and inverted'. The aircraft crashed off Point Mugu in 650 feet deep water.

A loss of airplane pitch control resulting from the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew assembly's acme nut threads. The thread failure was caused by excessive wear resulting from Alaska Airlines' insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly.
Contributing to the accident were Alaska Airlines' extended lubrication interval and the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) approval of that extension, which increased the likelihood that a missed or inadequate lubrication would result in excessive wear of the acme nut threads, and Alaska Airlines' extended end play check interval and the FAA's approval of that extension, which allowed the excessive wear of the acme nut threads to progress to failure without the opportunity for detection. Also contributing to the accident was the absence on the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 of a fail-safe mechanism to prevent the catastrophic effects of total acme nut thread loss.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• AlaskaAirlinesflight261
• AlaskaAirlines261
• Flight261
• Alaska261
• Alaska261recordings
• AlaskaAirlinesMD-80
• Flight261crash
• MD-80crash
• AlaskaAirlinescrash
• MD-83
• McDonnellDouglas
• DC-9
• horizontalstabilizer

[FLT111]

Today 12 years ago we remember those onboard who lost their lives aboard this flight.

January 31, 2000 - January 31, 2012

[aircrashdisaster]

Very good! Thank you for the upload, greater quality, greater sound. I think Alaska Airlines MD-80 look so nice in that livery. But stuff those maintenance.

Thumbs up fi you think John Liotine Rules! He tried his best to save an accident like this happening, but the airline put him off his job -.-

[ibdangler]

Good composure for the ATC considering the conditions. Not much one can do at that point. The pilots are heroes in my book. They did everything they could and were trying to even fly inverted. Such a tragedy but once again it put light on poor maintenance.

[FLT111]

@dgl1962 Pretty much, very sad.

[FLT111]

@Helicopterpilot16 It's best not to think. I hope that many of them were uncontious long before it hit. Probably would have been better so they dont see the end coming or experiencing horror in that final minute dive. I made a small documantry about this accident using flight simulator. If you have time check it out. just copy what im about to paste now and put:

/watch?v=cr-5wv6EUUU

Kindly regards FLT111

[Helicopterpilot16]

@FLT111 I just can't Imagine what the people in the cabin were going through.

[FLT111]

@Helicopterpilot16 Good point their mate. I totally agree with you. I hope I do not upload anymore videos of air accidents. Lets hope that we learn from these mistakes so these are NOT repeated.

[Helicopterpilot16]

@weirdosack Lets hope he runs out of these up to 2011! Remember peoples lives were ended here!

[FLT111]

@weirdosack Thanks very much for the support. I will do and same with you please upload more air accidents!

[dryline123]

Thanks for the upload very much, very good quality. Poor pilots poor passengers.. it just annoys me how maintenance could do something like this. I dont blame MD-80 just Alaska Airlines and their crummy maintenance!

Please upload more.