Wed, Aug 13, 2003
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.
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