Failure To Depressurize Cabin Caused Fatal Fall

The NTSB has determined pilot error led to an American Airlines flight attendant being sucked out of an airplane following an emergency landing in Miami more than five years ago.

American Flight 1291 took off from Miami en route to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, on November 20, 2000. The aircraft turned around shortly after takeoff due to pressurization problems. Upon landing in Miami, the captain ordered an evacuation due to indications of fire onboard the aircraft -- but did not depressurize the aircraft's cabin.

Flight attendant Jose Chiu, 34, struggled to open the left-front cabin door. After reporting the problem to the flight crew, he returned an attempted to open the door again. It was then the door exploded open, hurling Chiu out of the aircraft and forcing other cabin attendants to the floor as they, too, were sucked towards the open door.

Chiu's lifeless body was found 60 feet away from the aircraft. He had fallen two stories onto the tarmac. Apart from Chiu, three passengers received serious injuries, and one flight attendant and 18 passengers received minor injuries in the accident. There were 121 passengers onboard the aircraft.

NTSB investigators determined the plane's flight crew had not used a manual control to depressurize the aircraft once it was on the ground.

"It was an extremely isolated and rare incident," said American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith on Thursday. "We changed both our training and our procedures as a result of the situation to make sure people followed the procedure to avoid this happening."

As for the excessive amount of time in releasing its Probable Cause report, the NTSB says the report was actually completed over three years ago; however, a glitch on the NTSB website kept the report from posting.

FMI: Read The Probable Cause Report