Visit Little Rock National Airport On Fact-Finding Mission
The jury in a suit filed by the widow of AAL Flight 1420 Capt.
Richard Buschmann took a trip to the airport Wednesday, their tour
bus slowly rolling down Runway 4R at Little Rock National Airport
in Arkansas. The point? Lawyers for the widow say the safety zone
at the end of 4R was built too short and contributed to Buschmann's
death.
The suit comes in the wake of a June 1999 fatal runway accident
involving American Airlines Flight 1420, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82
that overran the end of the runway, went down an embankment, and
impacted approach light structures after landing at LIT.
Thunderstorms and heavy rain were reported in the area at the
time of the accident. There were 11 fatalities, including the
aircraft captain, and numerous injuries among the 145 passengers
and crew aboard the flight.
The official cause of this accident was "the flight crew's
failure to discontinue the approach when severe thunderstorms and
their associated hazards to flight operations had moved into the
airport area and the flight crew's failure to ensure that the
spoilers had extended after touchdown.
The NTSB found that contributing factors in the accident were
the flight crew's impaired performance resulting from fatigue and
the situational stress associated with the intent to land under the
circumstances; continuation of the approach to a landing when the
company's maximum crosswind component was exceeded; and the use of
reverse thrust greater than 1.3 engine pressure ratio after
landing."
The crash investigation also showed asymmetrical deployment of
the thrust reversers.
NTSB reports, of course, are not admissible as evidence in
court.
Officials at LIT objected to Wednesday's jury tour, accusing
Capt. Buschmann of poor judgement and fatigued at the end of a
14-hour long day.
But Edwin Kessler, former chief of the National Severe Storms
Lab in Norman, OK, blamed tower controllers for not giving
Buschmann and First Officer Michael Origel enough information about
the storm under which they landed -- describing it as Little Rock's
worst thunderstorm in 43-years.
"The pilot had not been at all informed about the intensity of
this complex," Kessler said, quoted by the Associated Press. "The
pilot logically figured that everything was sweet."
Buschmann was one of eleven people who died when the MD-82 (file
photo of type, above) slid off the end of the runway and into a
gully, bursting into flames.