Avianca Flight 52

The seat map of HK2016, the Boeing 707. The NTSB could not determine a relationship between the locations of passengers and the severity of injuries because some passengers were not assigned seats and because some passengers changed seats.

History

The flight crew included pilot Laureno Cavides-Hoyas, first officer Mauricio Klotz, and flight engineer Matias Moyano.^[2]

The last minutes of Flight 52

On January 25, 1990, Avianca Flight 52 had been in a holding pattern over New York for over one hour due to fog limiting arrivals and departures into John F. Kennedy International Airport. During this hold, the aircraft was exhausting its reserve fuel supply which would have allowed it to divert to its alternate, Boston, in case of an emergency or situation such as this one.

Seventy-seven minutes after entering the hold, New York Air Traffic Control asked the crew how long they could continue to hold, to which the first officer replied "...about five minutes." The First Officer then stated that their alternate was Boston, but since they had been holding for so long they would not be able to make it anymore; the controller then cleared the aircraft for an approach to runway 22L.

As Flight 52 flew the ILS approach, they encountered wind shear at an altitude of less than 500 feet (? 150 meters) and the plane descended below the glideslope, almost crashing into the ground short of the runway. As a result, a missed approach was initiated. Air traffic controllers had only informed the flight of wind shear at 1500 feet (? 450 metres). At this point, the plane did not have enough fuel for another approach.

The crew alerted the controller that they were low on fuel and in a subsequent transmission stated "We're running out of fuel, sir." The controller asked the crew to climb to which the first officer replied "No, sir, we're running out of fuel."

Moments later, the number four engine flamed out, shortly followed by the other three. With the aircraft's main source of electrical power, its generators, now gone and with only battery power remaining, automatic load shedding would have caused many non-essential electrical systems to lose power and the cabin would have been plunged into darkness. Within seconds, the aircraft had lost thrust from its 4 engines, causing it to plunge into the small, wealthy village of Cove Neck, New York in northern Long Island, in Oyster Bay; 15 miles (24 kilometres) from the airport.

The aircraft struck the ground and slid down a hill in the town, splitting into two pieces as it reached the bottom. The impact snapped off the cockpit and it landed over 100 feet (? 30 metres) away in the side of an unoccupied house. 73 passengers and crew died, while 85 survived with injuries. Had the plane not exhausted its fuel supply, there would likely have been a fire which would have claimed more lives.

Emergency Response

The recovery efforts for Flight 52 proved to be difficult since the aircraft had crashed into the hilly sparsely populated North Shore, making it difficult for emergency crews to reach. Rescue Squads from all over Long Island responded to the crash. This was compounded by the narrow winding roads that lead into the hamlet. The weather conditions and the darkness of night made the search crews' task even more challenging. The first ambulances to arrive performed triage, selecting the most critically injured passengers for transport to area hospitals. But so many other ambulances had arrived that a traffic jam developed, and some rigs were unable to leave the site immediately. Ambulatory passengers walked to other ambulances and arrived at hospitals sooner than critically injured ones.

Passengers and injuries

The head flight attendant, who received serious injuries, was the sole surviving crew member of the disaster.^[3]^[1]

The adult passengers on the Medellin-New York segment consisted of 61 males and 61 females. 16 children between 3 and 15 years of age, including 8 males and 8 females, flew on the Medellin-New York segment.^[1]

Of the 11 babies (8 males and 3 females with ages ranging from 4 months to 27 months^[1]) on the Medellin-New York flight, 10 survived.^[3]

Of the surviving passengers, 80 received serious injuries and 4 received minor injuries.^[1] Of the passengers indicated by the NTSB map to have been assigned to first class (Rows 4 and 5), one survived.^[4] The NTSB stated that as the airline did not assign all of the filled seats and that some passengers relocated to other seats after boarding, the NTSB could not determine the injuries in relation to precise seating arrangements.

Cause and Investigation

The NTSB report on the accident determined the cause as pilot error due to the crew never declaring a fuel emergency to air traffic control as per IATA guidelines. The crew was reported to have asked for "priority" landing which, due to language differences in English and Spanish, can be interpreted as an emergency to the Spanish speaking pilots but not to the English speaking Air Traffic Controllers. This may have caused some confusion amongst the pilots when the ATC confirmed their priority status. Some NTSB board members felt that ATC was negligent in not providing arriving aircraft with the latest wind shear information which may have alerted the crew to possible difficulties in landing. Avianca Airlines threatened to sue the FAA for the actions of the air controllers, who they felt were negligent in misunderstanding the pilots' reports. The FAA countered stating that the crew never declared a fuel emergency until the final minutes before the crash, and had never reported the amount of fuel they had left when asking for priority landing, making it impossible for air traffic controllers to give them correct priority status.

Further from the NTSB report, " There was no flight following or interaction with the Avianca Airlines dispatcher for AVA052 following takeoff from Medellin ...Contributing to the accident was the flight crew's failure to use an airline operational control dispatch system to assist them during the international flight into a high-density airport in poor weather." This accident, along with Hapag-Lloyd Flight 3378, has been used as an example of why airlines in different countries should always have proactive flight following by Flight Dispatchers, as required in the U.S. by Federal Aviation Regulations Part 121.

Aftermath

After some deliberations, a settlement was reached where the FAA paid for 40% of the settlements with the passengers and their families; the rest was paid by Avianca.

Following Flight 52, air traffic controllers were more conservative in determining if Avianca flights were running low on fuel and required priority landing. On 22 June 1990, a Boeing 727 was immediately cleared to land when the pilot declared a minimum fuel situation. In another instance, on 4 August 1990, controllers declared fuel emergency for the pilot due to confusion over the remaining fuel and the jet landed with 2 more flying hours to spare.^[5]