an american airlines flight crew prepares to depart dallas for little rock late and know with the weather and crew hours means they need a plane quickly which they get and their md-80 with 139 passengers and crew on board leaves for a late night flight in bad storms the weather is inialally ok but they are warned about two thunderstorms in the area and a bolwing alley type approach to get through but it will get worse and they already see lightning. the winds are also dnagerous that night and even though the crew disagree with each other on the crosswind limit its already out of range for wet runways and wouldn’t be legal on a dry runway well before they attempt to land. the controller doesn’t have good radar in little rock either and suggests runway 22 left for landing which is ok until a windshear alert forces them to change to land in the opposite direction runway 4 right which delays landing and lose strack of the storm the first officer has an easier time spotting the runway then the captain who can’t see it at all they don’t abandon the landing even switching to an ils approach and visibillity is out of limits as well with heavy rain as well. they somehow land on the runway but than immediately slide right off it at high speed into a wooden fence 10 passengers and the captain are killed in the crash and fire. the ntsb lead by greg feith investigate the crash and figure out pilot error involving landing in a dangerous storm but more importantly forgetting to arm the spoilers which meant they had no chance of slowing down at all. the fos evidence is contradictory to the cvr which doesn’t help the investigation the crews get there itis also meant they wouldn’t divert or returning to dallas.
next time an inferno brings down an md-11.
Harrison’s world 