Flight 261 kin want to hear cockpit tape
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Attorneys for families of those killed in the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 want to listen to the cockpit-voice recording, saying they need it to determine the pre-crash injuries and fear of the passengers.
Although the transcript of the recording has been made public, the attorneys argue they won't be able to fully assess the tape unless they listen to it and allow outside experts to evaluate the sounds and words.
The request has been submitted to a judicial referee in San Francisco overseeing evidentiary matters in the wrongful-death suits stemming from the crash.
Flight 261, en route from Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco and Seattle, crashed Jan. 31, 2000, off the Southern California coast, killing all 88 passengers and crew aboard the MD-83.
The Air Line Pilots Association has filed a motion seeking to intervene, arguing the tape shouldn't be released. The union contends privacy interests of the pilots outweighs any value it might have to the families.
Alaska Airlines opposes the release on similar grounds.
The families maintain they need to closely evaluate the sounds, which include clicks, thumps and a bang, said Jamie Liebovitz, a Cleveland attorney who represents 14 victims' families.
"All of those things have meaning and a source and a cause," he said.
In making the request, the families' attorneys have said they would not publicly release the tape, which contains the cockpit recording of the flight's final 30 minutes.
But they may ask to be allowed to play all or portions of the tape to a jury, Liebovitz said.
Cockpit recordings have been disclosed in past crashes with orders that they not be publicly released without the court's permission.
The transcript of the Flight 261 recording reveals the pilots struggled with the tail section's horizontal stabilizer before the plane crashed.
Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is looking into the cause of the crash, think the failure of the plane's jackscrew assembly, a key mechanism controlling the stabilizer, sent the plane into a dive.
In a pretrial deposition Nov. 14, Benjamin Forrest, an Alaska pilot who has heard the tape, testified that a bang on the recording, just before the dive, was a "very loud noise that actually hurt our ears."
"And there was a loss of control following that, an apparent loss of control following that loud noise, loud bang," said Forrest, one of five people who listened to the tape as part of the NTSB's effort to produce a transcript.
While no official conclusions have been reached about the bang, it is widely believed the sound came from the catastrophic failure of the jackscrew and the horizontal stabilizer moving beyond its normal limits.
Forrest said he also heard several thumps before the bang, along with similar sounds when the plane took an earlier dive.
The noises were so alarming, Forrest testified, the NTSB gave him and another Alaska pilot who listened to the tape permission to immediately make it known to pilots at Alaska and other airlines.
"The thumps that we heard could be critical," Forrest said, referring to the need for pilots flying MD-80 series planes to land at the nearest suitable airport after going through the checklist for a jammed or runaway stabilizer.
"I think our concern was that there was something that was drastically out of norm that had occurred," Forrest said.
Before the crash of Flight 261, "a commercial airplane had not had a situation like this, where it simply comes apart, or it seemed to come apart, or it just seemed to fly out of control," he said.
"It's not something that in my 30 years of aviation I'd heard of, and I've flown about 15 different kinds of aircraft, from Navy fighters to commercial airplanes, nor anybody in that room," he said, referring to the those who listened to the tape.
Forrest said he later described the contents of the tape to Alaska Chairman John Kelly and other top executives of the company, prompting "a lot of tears" and "quiet."
Forrest also testified he didn't hear screams or noises from the passenger cabin.
"Keep in mind, there's a lot of noise in the cockpit and clattering around," Forrest testified.
"You've got debris flying about, masking what was occurring back there."
Steve Miletich can be reached at 464-3302 or smiletich@seattletimes.com