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.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20001212X18961&ntsbno=DCA99MA060&akey=1