Criminal Phase of Pt Mugu Crash Litigation Closes

When Alaska Air Flight 261 went into the ocean off Pt Mugu on January 31, 2000, that event triggered a powderkeg of allegations and suspicions surrounding the airline's maintenance procedures. Action by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Northern California two weeks ago finally put the lid back on, without ignition.

The US Attorney decided not to press criminal charges against the airline.

It's been more than half a year sonce the NTSB closed its investigation into that crash that claimed 88 lives; the airline said in a statement to the SEC, "The U.S. Attorney's Office informed Alaska that, after a review of all of the relevant information, it has concluded that the evidence does not warrant the filing of criminal charges, and it has closed its investigation into the Flight 261 accident."

The NTSB determined the cause of the crash was, "...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."

The Board added, "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."

In June, the airline decided to simply accept responsibility for the crash; Boeing too said it would not contest liability. There remains one unsettled case, of the 88 that were filed.

FMI: www.alaska-air.com