BIRGENAIR FLIGHT 301
On February 6, 1996, Birgenair Flight 301 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, shortly after takeoff from Puerto Plata's Gregorio Luperón International Airport, Dominican Republic. The Flight 301 was a charter flight to Frankfurt, Germany. The aircraft was a Boeing 757-225, originally delivered to Eastern Air Lines in February 1985. The captain was Ahmet Erdem, who had 24 750 hours of flight time. The first officer was Aykut Gergin, who had 3 500 hours of flying experience. The relief pilot was Muhlis Evrenesoğlu, who had 15 000 flight hours to his credit.
Birgenair was a Turkish charter airline company. Massive negative publicity about Birgenair, following the Flight 301 disaster, caused a sharp decline in its reservations, and finally the company went into bankruptcy, and closed later that same year, 1996.
During takeoff roll, the captain found that his airspeed indicator was malfunctioning, but he chose not to abort the takeoff. The co-pilot's indicator seemed to work fine. While climbing through 4700 feet, the captain's airspeed indicator readings were greater than the actual airspeed. The autopilot, which was taking its airspeed information from the same equipment, that was providing faulty readings to the captain's airspeed indicator, increased the pitch-up attitude, and reduced power in order to lower the plane's airspeed. The co-pilot's airspeed indicator was giving a correct reading, yet the aircraft started to give multiple contradictory visible and audible warnings, that it was flying too fast. The autopilot reached the limits of its programming and disengaged. The crew then reduced thrust to lower the speed of the plane. This action immediately triggered the 757's stick-shaker stall alert, warning the confused pilots that the aircraft was flying dangerously slow, just seconds after the indicators had warned them that the speed was too high. The autopilot, fed by the captain's faulty airspeed indicator, had reduced the speed close to the stall speed. When finally realizing, that they were losing speed and altitude, the captain attempted to recover from the stall by increasing the plane's thrust to full, but as the aircraft was still in a nose up attitude, the engines were prevented from receiving adequate airflow, required to match the increase in thrust. The left engine flamed out, causing the right engine, which was still at full power, to throw the aircraft into a spin, and eight seconds later the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. All 189 people on board were killed.
The cause of the accident was pilot error, after receiving incorrect airspeed information from one of the pitot tubes, which investigators believe was blocked by a wasp nest built inside it. The aircraft had been sitting unused for two days without the pitot tube covers in place.
With 189 fatalities, Flight 301 remains the deadliest accident involving the Boeing 757 aircraft.
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