And Howard Stern thought it would be funny to mock their deaths pretty much immediately.

Hey Howard, thanks for the gig.

Now had they firewalled the throttles, buzzed the 14th st bridge and flown on to Florida, I imagine the lessons may still have been learned about not waiting so long after deicing, but who knows. There have been a few others where, in retrospect, jamming the throttle forward would have been a better course of action. AA191, IIRC would have probably flown out of their problem with just a few extra knots in airspeed too.
I'm no pilot or aviation engineer but I do know that speed and altitude can be your friends, and you don't want to run out of either.

/Just rambling
//so, so tired...

Cranky me, all I took from the article is that the author didn't bother to learn the difference between de-icing (Type I) and anti-icing (Type IV) fluid. The thick stuff is anti-ice. Also, the captain had next to no time in type, and thought it could fly with a heavy ice load like the DC3's he was used to.

/de-iced my first plane yesterday
//didn't need anti-ice 'cause it quit snowing

Came in to post about the larval proto-dick that was well on his way to being a giant cock on the radio. Thanks for covering that for me.

My mother was in her car on that bridge as the plane clipped it. The bridge, not the car.

30 years? sonofabiatch!

This smacks of government interference in big business.

trailerpimp: 30 years? sonofabiatch!

My reaction, too. Hey, I remember that......shiat!!!!

Experts listened to the CVR and are convinced that the pilots forget to turn on the deicers on the wings.

That, plus pulling in close behind another jet as it revved its engines to take off in the mistaken assumption that the jet exhaust would blow off the snow on the wings rather than simply melt it and allow more ice to form doomed that flight.

If you want to hear the audio: CVR AF Flight 90 http://www.planecrashinfo.com/MP3s/ (new window)

I remember this. And I remember Lenny, the hero.

JungleBoogie: Arland Williams

Thanks for that link. That's the part I remember and I always tear up remembering his sacrifice.

That was 30 years ago? Has anyone seen my Geritol?

video badness:
airplanepoliotards! (new window) Plane Crash - Air Florida Flight 90 Crashes Into The Potomac
footage with narration (new window)

... and that's why you turn off your phone.

An essay in TIME magazine dated January 25, 1982, was written before the identity of Williams was known. Roger Rosenblatt, the essay's author, wrote:

" So the man in the water had his own natural powers. He could not make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do. "

-Rosenblatt, R., "The Man in the Water," Time Magazine, January 25, 1982.[1]

January 10 - The lowest ever United Kingdom temperature of −27.2 °C (−17.0 °F) is recorded at Braemar, in Aberdeenshire. This equals the record set in the same place in 1895 (the record is equalled again at Altnaharra in 1995).
January 11 - Mark Thatcher, son of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara during the Paris-Dakar Rally. He is rescued January 14.
January 11-January 17 - A brutal cold snap sends temperatures to all-time record lows in dozens of cities throughout the Midwestern United States.
January 13 - Shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90 crashes into Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78. On the same day, a Washington Metro train derails to the north, killing 3 (the system's first fatal accident).
January 17 - Cold Sunday sweeps over the northern United States.

I was 10.
I just remembered why I wanted to fly helicopters when I was a kid. I wanted to be like that chopper pilot.

HempHead: Experts listened to the CVR and are convinced that the pilots forget to turn on the deicers on the wings.

That, plus pulling in close behind another jet as it revved its engines to take off in the mistaken assumption that the jet exhaust would blow off the snow on the wings rather than simply melt it and allow more ice to form doomed that flight.

If you want to hear the audio: CVR AF Flight 90 http://www.planecrashinfo.com/MP3s/ (new window)

Basically the whole thing was a clusterfark. They blew ice into their engines by backing up in a non-recommended fashion, they failed to turn on their engine anti-icing system, they didn't go back for more anti-icing, they pulled in close to another jet, and they failed to abort take off when they hadn't hit speed a the right time. Basically it was basically an entire lesson on how NOT to handle winter flying. And on top of all that the anti-icing solution being used that day wasn't the correct strength.

My dad remembers work that day, but says he was too busy being affected by the Metro crash to take full note of the plane crash til later (lives in MD, commuted on Metro). But later in life Lenny Skutnik became one of my dad's coworkers.


This is actually one of the crashes I have the most interest in out of my entire interest in plane disasters, despite the fact I would have been about 9 months old at the time.

Good thing Sully was there.

CantConfirmOrDeny: This accident still infuriates me. So easily avoided. Such a spectacular failure of basic airmanship on the part of the flight deck crew. What a couple of idiots these guys were. All this crap about deicing is just so much crap and lame excuses. If the pilots had demonstrated even minimal competence, this would never have happened.

Every time I read an article about this they mention the crew lacked training in winter weather. I find myself mentally dropping the "winter weather" part.

They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into.

Greeceman sucks. And he is not even Greek.

For the life of me,I will never understand why you would not firewall the thrust levers with the stick-shaker going off-you have nothing to lose !Just defies logic.The EPR (Engine Pressure Ratio ) gauges were presenting false information,they thought because it was cold.Jets now use more reliable engine speed instrumentation.The co-pilot was an ex-military fighter jock with just about zero icing experience.For the captain to pull behind the DC9 and hope that kept them free of ice was ludicrous.Oh,and if you read the report-if they had aborted the take off,they probably collided with an Eastern 727 that was almost to the runway.A landmark accident to be sure.

RVZ-ATP/CFII Pt.121 jet capt.,two types

flaminio: They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into.

i was gonna post that, but i froze up!

I was 9 at the time and I still tear up thinking about Lenny Skutnick and Arland Williams (and the flight attendant whose name escapes me). Pure, raw humans at our best.

Warthog: I was only 6, but I remember that day. Schools in Fairfax were closed because of the snow, so we did the logical thing and grabbed the sleds and headed to the local sledding hill. As soon as we got there we ran into some random guy who said "did you hear?," and then told my folks about it and I think the Metro crash too. We then went home much earlier than I wanted, and went home to see the news.

I remember that in my little six year old way I alternated between being pissed at my parents, being pissed at the plane, and not understanding what the fuss was about given that on the TV there was no airplane in the pictures so how could it have crashed?

/CSB

Fairfax schools were open that day. We couldn't leave school because the buses couldn't get out, so I walked home.

CantConfirmOrDeny: This accident still infuriates me. So easily avoided. Such a spectacular failure of basic airmanship on the part of the flight deck crew. What a couple of idiots these guys were. All this crap about deicing is just so much crap and lame excuses. If the pilots had demonstrated even minimal competence, this would never have happened.

It always amazes me, reading about airline crashes, how many different things have to go wrong or be ignored for a crash to actually happen. The "one thing goes wrong and there was no hope" stories are mostly confined to military aircraft, airlines are uncannily safe as long as the pilot and the ground crews aren't completely incompetent.

Whoever was flying that park police helicopter was/is an absolute stud. Giant brass balls doesn't begin to describe that guy and his skills.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a series of regulations and directives since the 1980s governing use of de-icing fluids and training for pilots and ground crews. The most recent, released in August, requires that planes with de-icing systems be equipped with automatic cockpit alerts and that smaller commercial planes be retrofitted with ice-detection systems.

Everytime your Fox News watching uncle pipes up about "job killing regulations", kindly mention this as an example.

LadySusan: " So the man in the water had his own natural powers. He could not make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he held it to a standoff. He was the best we can do. "

That's powerfully moving. *save*

I was not yet born when the crash happened, but the NYT retrospective on it stuck with me - the frame story of lepidopterists in tragically abbreviated love, the crushing sadness of almost-was that every survivor's account repeats in its own way. (Hmm, still available here.)

I remember this accident when I was a kid. No adult could explain why an office worker jumped in to save that woman while rescue, fire and law enforcement watched.

My pubes haven't been this long since I was 9.

the opposite of charity is justice: Everytime your Fox News watching uncle pipes up about "job killing regulations", kindly mention this as an example.

Well that's a nonsense argument. Arguments that refer to "job killing regulations" usually reference, you know, "job killing regulations". Not safety regulations for planes.

This is the liberal false analogy argument - that when conservatives argue against regulations they mean safety regulations that have demonstrably provable positive effects. They (the liberals) conveniently ignore all the other 1 million regulations that don't have demonstrably provable positive effects. Like anything by the EPA, Obama's health care plan, or even the federal DOT requirements.