Air Disasters (2022) Season 17 Episode 9: Turboprop Terror
See how an aborted landing turned into a fatal crash due to a series of catastrophic decisions in the cockpit.
#documentary #historical
See how an aborted landing turned into a fatal crash due to a series of catastrophic decisions in the cockpit.
#documentary #historical
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TVTranscript
00:00On approach to Raleigh-Durham Airport.
00:07Did we just have a flame out?
00:09The pilots decide to abort their landing.
00:12When you have an engine failure, you lose 80% of your performance.
00:16Let's go missed approach.
00:18But the plan falls apart.
00:21Lower the nose.
00:23We were going down.
00:32Only five of the 20 people on board survive.
00:37NTSB investigators are puzzled by the wreckage of Flight 3379.
00:42It appears the engines are rotating at full power.
00:44So what went wrong?
00:48Only by taking a test flight to the brink of disaster.
00:51Yawing to the left.
00:53Will an astonishing sequence of events be revealed?
00:57This airplane had to crash.
01:24American Eagle Flight 3379 approaches Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
01:36Okay, can you do the descent checklist, please?
01:43In the cockpit, Captain Mike Hillis and First Officer Matthew Saylor prepare for landing.
01:50Altimeter 30, 31, set, cross-checked.
01:5430, 31, set, cross-checked.
01:58These were young pilots just starting off in their career.
02:02They were looking to go work at the major airlines where the pay and benefits were substantially better.
02:10The pilots are flying a Jetstream 3201, a twin turboprop airplane designed for short flights.
02:18It's a workhorse for regional airlines like American Eagle.
02:22Turboprop engines run more efficiently at lower altitudes.
02:26They're actually more fuel efficient.
02:29So on these short-haul routes, the Jetstream pretty much fit that market.
02:37Flight 3379 took off at 6 p.m. from Greensboro, North Carolina.
02:43It's a 35-minute flight to Raleigh-Durham Airport.
02:47Well, folks, at this time, we're about 10.8 miles from Raleigh-Durham International Airport,
02:52about five minutes out, and we're about to begin our approach.
02:55Weather tonight's not very good in Raleigh.
02:57Two-mile visibility because of rain and fog, and the winds are out of the north at six miles an hour.
03:05There are 18 passengers on board tonight, among them, college student Lauren Anderson.
03:13I had been up the night before.
03:14I had stayed up all night, pulled an all-nighter, wrote a paper,
03:17and slid it under the door of my English professor that morning.
03:21So I was pretty tired.
03:23It had been a long week of finals.
03:24I was ready to get home.
03:30Eagle Flight 3379, reduce to 170, then descend and maintain 3,000.
03:39Two miles from Raleigh-Durham, Flight 3379 is cleared to begin its descent.
03:47170, then 3,000, 3379.
03:54The flight crew reduces engine power.
04:01In a turboprop plane, the engine power and the propeller speed are controlled separately.
04:08The Jetstream 32 had no autopilot, so you were always hand-flying.
04:16It was one of the most demanding airplanes on a pilot's flying skills.
04:24Descending to 3,000 feet, the crew keeps a close eye on the weather.
04:33Do you get a chance?
04:34Look out your window and see if you see any of that ice.
04:39Yeah, I was looking out there. I don't see anything right now.
04:45Icing can be a major threat to an aircraft.
04:48It not only increases the weight of it, but also spoils the aerodynamics over the wing.
04:56Icing isn't the only hazard facing the pilots.
05:01Eagle Flight 3379, caution wake turbulence. You're spacing on a 727.
05:07Turn left 1-9-0.
05:11There's a 727 landing ahead of Flight 3379, which creates a potential hazard for the flight crew.
05:20Heavy aircraft tend to generate very strong horizontal tornadoes called vortexes that come off the wingtips.
05:31If a smaller aircraft has an encounter with wake turbulence,
05:37it could be so powerful that it's beyond the control of the pilot to counteract it.
05:44Left 1-9-0, 3379.
05:50For safety, the pilots make a minor adjustment to their course.
05:55Eagle Flight 3379, Raleigh, cleared to land. Wind 0-1-0 at 8, traffic 3.5 miles final on a 727.
06:06Cleared to land 5 left, 3379.
06:11Once the Boeing 727 touches down, Flight 3379 will be cleared to land.
06:22We didn't anticipate any issues.
06:26It was the same old, same old, I'd say. I probably had taken that flight three times already that year.
06:35And gear down.
06:38Gear down.
06:41The pilots configure the plane for landing.
06:44Flaps 20.
06:48Flaps 20.
06:51Just minutes before touchdown.
06:57Why is that ignition light on? Did we just have a flame out?
07:02The engine ignition light illuminates.
07:05Seeing the ignition light come on during approach would typically raise a concern.
07:11If combustion is interrupted for any reason, it's what pilots call a flame out or an engine failure.
07:20I'm not sure what's going on with it.
07:23If there is an engine failure, the pilots need to reconsider landing.
07:29The pilot would have to make the decision whether to continue the approach or abort the approach and see what the problem is.
07:37What do you want me to do? Are you going to continue?
07:40Okay, yeah. I'm going to continue. Just back me up.
07:45Hepton-Hillis decides to land.
07:49All right. Let's go missed approach.
07:53But then he reverses his decision.
07:58A go-around or a missed approach would have given the pilot more time to run an engine failure checklist.
08:06When you're on final, you really don't have that much time to complete it.
08:13Set max power.
08:17Now at 1,500 feet, Captain Hillis aborts the landing.
08:23When you have an engine failure, you not only lost half your power, you lose 80% of your performance.
08:33Flake 3379 isn't climbing.
08:37And it's losing speed.
08:40Lower the nose. Lower the nose.
08:45At 1,400 feet, the plane is stalling.
08:51You got it? Yeah.
08:54They're unable to climb. They're starting to lose directional control of the aircraft.
09:01Flake 3379 is turning steadily to the left, veering further off course.
09:07Lower the nose.
09:10Things are getting bad real fast, and they're running out of time.
09:15Here.
09:18Plunging rapidly toward the ground, the pilots fight to recover their plane.
09:23There's no flight attendant on the plane.
09:26There was a lot of commotion.
09:28You could hear some kind of warning siren.
09:32I was scared. People were scared.
09:38We knew we were crashing. I knew we were going down.
09:48I just braced myself, literally putting my hand and my foot on the seat in front of me.
10:02I had a moment that, okay, I need to survive. I need to live through this.
10:30I crashed. I just remember hitting ground very, very fast, very hard.
10:38Flake 3379 has just plowed through the dense woods of North Carolina.
10:44It's now a pile of burning wreckage.
10:49The plane split, literally, in between my seat and the seat in front of me.
10:57I remember taking my seatbelt off and hearing people moaning and people screaming.
11:04I couldn't see anything.
11:07I don't know if I lost my contacts or I just had fuel in my eyes.
11:14I couldn't walk, but my adrenaline was pumping.
11:20I was in fight-or-flight mode.
11:23My intuition was that I had to survive, and somehow I got away from the fire.
11:41Morrisville firefighter David Farrell is one of the first responders on site.
11:48And your heart's racing, I mean.
11:52You know you're probably fixing to encounter one of the worst things you've ever been in your life.
11:59You could see the fire. Your heart was in your throat.
12:02You know, I mean, your adrenaline's pumping, you're scared.
12:06As I got closer to the scene, something called my eye, and I looked down.
12:19I saw a female pulling herself away from the fire, and she couldn't move her legs.
12:29He had asked my name, and I told him I needed to find my suitcase and that I needed to get home.
12:37I said, you're going to make it.
12:41You're not going to die on my watch.
12:45You're through the worst of this, and we're going to get you out of here.
12:51Lauren Anderson is one of only five survivors. Fifteen others are killed.
12:58I did break bones in my hand, my clavicle, broke my ribs, punctured my lungs.
13:06I broke and dislocated my back, tibia, fibula, break in my left leg, bones in my ankle.
13:18Captain Mike Hillis and First Officer Matthew Saylor are among the dead.
13:27National Transportation Safety Board investigators are on site by morning.
13:36Anyone finding the data recorders?
13:39Team is still looking. The weather wasn't great last night.
13:43Well, I'm going to need the pilot's record of icing and the weather data.
13:50In this particular accident, icing was very paramount because 3379 was a second accident for American Eagle.
13:58Just a few weeks past, we'd had another jet stream involved with icing conditions.
14:06Was icing the reason Flight 3379 failed to make it to the airport just four miles away?
14:17Landing gear's down.
14:29Do we know how the flaps are set?
14:31I'll check with our guy in the cockpit.
14:34Strouch here, what can you tell us about the flap selector?
14:38The cockpit section was particularly damaged.
14:43There were a lot of controls on the instruments we were unable to document.
14:47The flap selector is fused in a 20 degree position.
14:51Copy that.
14:53The flap extension was also very interesting because it was in the landing configuration.
15:00Thank you very much.
15:04The plane was iced up as they were landing. I mean, that's trouble.
15:09We had to start making major inquiries into the possibility of an icing involvement.
15:15These are pilot reports from five other planes flying into Raleigh.
15:21We do have pilots reporting light icing, but just trace icing at high altitudes.
15:28Investigators learned that the other pilots flying near Raleigh-Durham weren't reporting any significant issues with icing.
15:36The icing, although it was present in the area, was absolutely no factor in the accident investigation.
15:45They were all set to land. So what went wrong?
15:52Maybe they had engine trouble.
15:57The investigators had a major challenge trying to figure out if one of the engines had malfunctioned in some way.
16:04Hey, can you bring that blade over here, please?
16:08Thank you. Thank you, sir.
16:13Now, is this blade from the left propeller?
16:16Yes, this is from the right propeller.
16:20The team examines the propellers for an indication that they were rotating.
16:25Man, it is bent. And look at the damage right here.
16:29The way the blade is damaged provides a clue.
16:34If you've got turning propellers on your airplane, they tend to grab into things and bend forward as they hit the debris of trees and so on.
16:45It appears the engines are rotating at full power.
16:50So he's four miles from the airport. He's configured to land.
16:56What happened?
16:59As we spent more time on site with a 3379 wreckage, the questions just kept coming.
17:07It made it very clear that this accident was going to be a real puzzler.
17:21Were the pilots reporting any problems during their approach?
17:24Let me have a look.
17:27NTSB investigators hope the pilots' conversations with air traffic controllers can shed some light on why Flight 3379 crashed before reaching Raleigh-Durham Airport.
17:41They're the last people to talk to the crew, and we want to know if there was anything unusual in their conversations.
17:49No, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
17:54Eagle Flight 3379, reduce to 1-7-0, then descend and maintain 3,000.
18:02The controller tells investigators that Flight 3379's approach seemed routine.
18:091-70, then 3,000.
18:113379?
18:15Was there any conflicting traffic as they were coming in?
18:17Well, yes.
18:21There was a 727 landing right ahead of them.
18:24I warned them about wake turbulence.
18:27Eagle Flight 3379, caution wake turbulence.
18:30You're spacing on a 727.
18:32Turn left 1-9-0.
18:35The wake turbulence issue is particularly critical.
18:38This would be a factor that we were going to have to deal with.
18:41Thank you very much, sir.
18:48How fast is a wake vortex descent?
18:52300 feet per minute.
18:57Investigators compare the flight path of Flight 3379 with the estimated path of the wake vortex.
19:04All right.
19:05Let's see what we got.
19:09They use recorded radar returns for both planes and factor in the weather at the time of the accident.
19:19Looks like Flight 3379 missed it.
19:22By more than 600 feet.
19:25The jet stream did not fly through any of those vortexes.
19:29Wake turbulence did not affect the flight path of the accident aircraft.
19:37But the radar data reveals that something happened along the flight path.
19:42According to this, he veers off course after missing the wake vortices.
19:48He's off to the left.
19:50Why?
19:52Why is this aircraft over here to the left of the final approach path configured to land?
20:00Okay.
20:01Can you do the descent checklist, please?
20:05The team turns to the cockpit voice recorder, hoping they might find an explanation for the unusual left turn.
20:14We were going to really have to look at what was going on on the flight deck with the cockpit crew.
20:19What were they saying?
20:20What were their intentions?
20:22Altimeter 3031 set.
20:25Cross check.
20:26Pressurization set and checked.
20:29Ice protection is on.
20:32Investigators hear the captain and first officer planning the approach with precision.
20:37Okay, reviewed.
20:40So far, so good.
20:43The flight crew seems to be working in perfect tandem as Flight 3379 approaches the airport.
20:52Why is that ignition light on?
20:54Did we just have a flame out?
20:57Did he just say flame out?
20:59Play that again.
21:01Did we just have a flame out?
21:05When the captain talks about the ignition light, that came out of nowhere.
21:14We had a flame out.
21:16We lost the left one?
21:17Yeah.
21:21They discover that the ignition light illuminated moments before the crash.
21:28This ignition light introduced the thought of a lost engine.
21:32Considering the physical evidence we'd seen, this idea was very strange.
21:38You would expect during that period that there would be some sort of confirmation.
21:44Nothing happened other than absolute quiet.
21:49We needed to try and figure out what was going on.
21:58These are the engine sound waves from when the ignition light went on.
22:03Another way for investigators to determine if the engines were operating is to analyze their sound on the cockpit voice recording.
22:11This study is attempting to home in on blade passing frequencies.
22:17Blade passing meaning all these revolutions of the propeller.
22:25Call up the comparison.
22:29They compare the engine sounds from Flight 3379 to other engines operating at 100%.
22:37We're looking at the acoustics of the engine performance.
22:40And it's relatively easy to match that against the acoustics of a working engine.
22:47They're almost identical.
22:51Investigators hear evidence that both engines were running at full speed.
22:58The sound analysis told us that the sounds generated by the engines on this aircraft were consistent with two engines generating power.
23:07The ignition light must have misled the pilots into believing the left engine flamed out.
23:12When really, it hadn't.
23:18This sound analysis put the idea of an engine failure to bed.
23:23It just wasn't a factor in the accident.
23:26This discovery leaves investigators puzzled.
23:31Why was that ignition light on if there was nothing wrong with the engine?
23:44Why is that ignition light on?
23:46Did we just have a flame out?
23:49Investigators examine jet stream manuals to determine why an ignition light would come on even though the plane's engines were fully operational.
24:02So what activates it?
24:07It's wired to a negative torque system.
24:11Negative torque occurs when the air loads on the propellers cause them to drive the engines
24:17Instead of the engines driving the propellers, it can be a sign of a flame out.
24:23This is the same scenario you would have as when you put your car in low gear going down a hill and use the transmission to drag.
24:33It says the ignition light will activate if they advance the propeller speed too quickly.
24:39There is a situation when you would be at a low power setting on your torque and as you go speeds high in preparation for landing,
24:48if you move those speed levers up too quickly, that could trigger the negative torque to cause that light to come on.
24:58Go ahead. Flaps 10.
25:02Investigators return to the CVR to learn if the pilots mention increasing the propeller speed.
25:10Let's go ahead and go speeds high.
25:14They hear Captain Hillis advancing the propellers to 100% for landing.
25:20Why is that ignition light on?
25:25There it is.
25:27They advance through propeller speed and boom, the ignition light illuminates.
25:33The team discovers that the pilots created negative torque.
25:39Negative torque doesn't necessarily mean there was an engine failure.
25:43You would get a transient situation for a second or two.
25:47That could trigger that light to come on.
25:50We had a flame out.
25:53He misdiagnoses the situation.
25:56Well, surely he checks his engine's RPMs.
26:01What do you want me to do? Are you going to continue?
26:04Okay, yeah. I'm going to continue. Just back me up.
26:10He's not even checking to see if there's an actual engine failure.
26:14Look at your instruments. Determine whether or not both engines are generating power.
26:20It's not that hard. They're trained for that.
26:23If he had, he would have seen the engine power was where he put it. 100% full power.
26:31If you don't know if you have an engine failure, but you're responding to a potential engine failure,
26:36that's not very good, and that could very easily cause an accident.
26:40Let's go missed approach.
26:43So what actions did the pilots take during the missed approach?
26:50Okay, so how did they configure their plane for their missed approach?
26:55They set engine power to max.
26:58Set max power.
27:04As they should have. What else?
27:09There's no mention of reducing the flaps to 10 or retracting landing gear.
27:15A go-around would be done by informing the other pilot.
27:19Then apply max power, retract the gear, retract the flaps.
27:27But the pilot's failure to raise the gear or retract the flaps doesn't explain the accident.
27:34Hard to believe that configuration caused the plane to veer to the left and crash.
27:38Well, there's only one way to find out.
27:47There was a necessity to conduct some flight tests,
27:50because we really wanted to figure out what the crew had introduced in the configuration
27:55that would make the aircraft deviate from this intended flight path.
28:00Okay, let's go max power.
28:03Investigators turn to test pilots for help.
28:06They'll take a Jetstream 3201 to its limits to try to solve the mystery.
28:12Sometimes you have to put yourself in an uncomfortable position,
28:16and you know what's going to happen if you go too far.
28:20Max power.
28:21Flaps to 20.
28:23They start by duplicating the configuration the pilots had set for the missed approach.
28:28Flaps 20.
28:30Gear down.
28:33Okay.
28:35Gear down.
28:42Okay, it's a bit slower than a regular missed approach, but it's still doable.
28:47So why did Flight 3379 turn to the left and crash?
28:54Let's do the same configuration, but put max power on the right engine, but not the left.
28:59Roger that.
29:04Try a different configuration in the hope of recreating the pilots' actions.
29:11Max power right engine.
29:15Yawing to the left.
29:22I can't climb like this.
29:31Investigators finally understand how Captain Hillis executed the missed approach.
29:36Set max power.
29:40Believing his left engine has failed, the captain increases power only to the right engine.
29:49Lower the nose.
29:51Lower the nose.
29:55The difference in engine power robs the plane of the airspeed it needs to climb out with the gear down and the flaps extended.
30:03No!
30:10The flight test told us that an airplane with that configuration could not have been flown safely.
30:15It had to crash.
30:19He had that plane configured all wrong.
30:24Investigators conclude that the captain didn't configure his plane correctly for a missed approach.
30:31The captain thought one of his engines failed.
30:33They should have performed a single engine missed approach.
30:38Didn't do that either.
30:41So he set himself up for a nearly unflyable airplane.
30:48You got it?
30:49Yeah.
30:51CB investigators focus squarely on the captain of Flight 3379, 29-year-old Michael Hillis.
30:59To come across an accident where a response was botched as poorly as this one, it begs the question, how did he get there?
31:14It's got 2,294 hours of turboprops.
31:223,499 total flying hours.
31:26He's young, but he's no rookie.
31:29NTSB investigators scrutinize the personnel records of the pilots of Flight 3379.
31:37We want to find out the background of the pilots.
31:40Is there anything in their performance that can reveal something about their performance on the night of the accident?
31:47From American Eagle's files, the team learns that Michael Hillis was licensed to fly multiple turboprop airplanes.
31:55Starts off, so turning on the jet stream in March 1991.
32:00We've got single engine missed approaches today.
32:02Are you ready for that?
32:04Yes, sir.
32:06CB investigators dig deeper into Captain Hillis' pilot records.
32:13All right, I am cutting your left engine.
32:18We like to see an airman with airmanship, so we had to look back at the training information.
32:27Like this?
32:30Trainer's evaluation.
32:33Okay, you're losing airspeed that you're going to need. How do you get it back?
32:37Not sure.
32:41Oh, this is telling. He's messing up single engine missed approaches.
32:46It was very obvious that this captain was having serious troubles with his airmanship development.
32:53Single engine missed approaches, engine failures.
32:58When is this?
33:00April 1992.
33:02That was two years before the accident. He had more than enough time to improve.
33:08Well, he must have dug in. He makes captain a few months later.
33:12By the time pilots become airline pilots, they're pretty good.
33:16The selection process is so rigorous that you don't get to be an airline pilot unless you had considerable capabilities.
33:25That's all I have here.
33:29Are there any American Eagle pilots that will talk to us about him?
33:32Let's find out.
33:35The NTSB wants to know more about Hillis' career.
33:39Usually in the pilot file, there'll be some little notes about the issues that have been encountered by other persons in flying with the captain.
33:49What can you tell me about Mike Hillis?
33:54Oh, we're pretty broken up about this.
33:57Investigators tracked down American Eagle's Raleigh-Durham base manager.
34:02Unfortunately, we had a lot of complaints about his flying.
34:06I was really surprised to hear him say that.
34:09Complaints? From whom?
34:13Well, several first officers that flew with him out of Raleigh.
34:17Co-pilots were whispering to their colleagues it was something not normal.
34:22We had co-pilots that were afraid to fly with him, and they'd keep a close eye on what he was doing.
34:28Really?
34:30If pilots are afraid to fly with this guy, which is essentially what the base manager told us, that's very revealing about the accident.
34:44I'm surprised not.
34:47I hate to say it, but this is a really questionable pilot.
34:53We got a picture of a pilot who could fly okay, but when he was faced with something unexpected, his performance would start deteriorating.
35:06How'd this guy end up at American Eagle, huh? Where'd they find him?
35:10His application should be unfound.
35:13We try to get as much information as we can for a complete pilot's history.
35:20His previous job was with Comair.
35:23Captain Hillis applied to work for American Eagle in October 1990 while he was flying for another airline.
35:32Find out if they did a background check on this guy.
35:36When investigators ask American Eagle about background checks on Mike Hillis, they're shocked by what they learn.
35:46They did not go back and check with previous employers.
35:52The NTSB does what American Eagle never did.
35:56They requisition Mike Hillis' file from Comair.
35:59When we compared his records with Comair and with his records at American Eagle, they were consistent.
36:05Moody, unpredictable, gets distracted.
36:09Concerns about tunnel vision in an emergency situation.
36:15And he was potentially a dangerous pilot.
36:19Tunnel vision in an emergency situation.
36:22Comair could see it.
36:24Tunnel vision in an emergency situation.
36:27Comair could see it.
36:29This guy wanted him fired.
36:34This just keeps getting worse.
36:37I've never encountered before or since a pilot who was recommended to be terminated because he was potentially unsafe.
36:45Comair recommended for dismissal.
36:50Well, did they fire him?
36:53He resigns from Comair before they can fire him.
36:57That captain should not have been flying passengers.
37:00Under any circumstances.
37:05Did American Eagle know about this guy's performance history?
37:08It doesn't look like they asked.
37:12There's no record of Comair providing it to American Eagle.
37:17But the picture is crystal clear.
37:20Michael Hillis' flying career was blemished by failed certification tests,
37:25bad evaluations from trainers,
37:28and complaints from colleagues that were never passed on to American Eagle.
37:32One would have to ask themselves, if you really knew the background of this pilot,
37:37would you put your wife or your child in that aircraft?
37:40And the answer would be no.
37:43But there were two pilots in the cockpit of Flight 3379.
37:49Lower the nose.
37:51Lower the nose!
37:53In this case, the ability of the first officer to recognize that the captain's skills were deficient,
37:59it took a long time.
38:01Did the first officer know who he was flying with?
38:07Here.
38:09Investigators wonder if first officer Saylor knew he was teamed with an unreliable pilot.
38:20First officer Matthew Ian Saylor, 25 years old.
38:25Worked for American Eagle for a year before the crash.
38:29The NTSB looks into the work schedules of First Officer Saylor and Captain Hillis.
38:36Have you flown with Hillis before?
38:43No, not once.
38:44They discover the first officer was new to this particular route.
38:48So was he based out of Raleigh?
38:50Uh, no.
38:52He worked out of Miami.
38:56I think it was critical to this accident that the first officer was from a different base than the captain.
39:04First officers in Raleigh-Durham need to keep a close eye on him, but he's out of Miami.
39:08First officers in Raleigh-Durham need to keep a close eye on him, but he's out of Miami.
39:14This guy had no idea who he was flying with.
39:21Let's go ahead and go speeds high.
39:24When First Officer Saylor joins Captain Hillis in the cockpit on December 13, 1994,
39:31he has no idea what type of pilot he's teamed with.
39:35This pilot should never have been a pilot in command of that aircraft.
39:40As Flight 3379 is on final approach for Raleigh-Durham, Captain Hillis is caught by surprise.
39:47He misinterprets the illumination of an ignition light.
39:52Why is that ignition light on?
39:54Did we just have a flame out?
39:56I'm not sure what's going on with it.
40:00We had a flame out.
40:02Captain Hillis doesn't realize that by increasing the propeller speed too quickly,
40:07he has created a momentary negative torque condition.
40:10He misdiagnosed it as an engine failure and responded improperly.
40:15I'm going to continue.
40:18Instead of landing, Hillis decides to do a go-around.
40:22Let's go missed approach.
40:24Starting with the captain's misdiagnosis of an engine failure and his decision to go around,
40:31it pretty much was self-induced engine failure.
40:36The pilots now face a severe emergency.
40:41The gear was down. He was trying to climb.
40:44Set max power.
40:47It was impossible in that configuration.
40:49They were basically about to go off the edge of the cliff.
40:55Lower the nose.
40:58It falls to the first officer to rectify the captain's mistakes.
41:02Here.
41:06I think he could have saved the airplane, but by the time he recognized that, it was too late.
41:20No!
41:26Fifteen people are killed because of Hillis' errors.
41:34I made every mistake in the book in the last two minutes of the flight.
41:42I had anger, sure, at that time for the pilot and the co-pilot for the errors that they made.
41:49Ultimately, there was more pointing fingers to the airline.
41:55American Eagle accessed documents about Hillis' past before they hired him.
42:00He might not have been in that cockpit on December 13, 1994.
42:10The final takeaway from 3379 is that we've got to identify those airmen
42:16that don't display airmanship qualities.
42:21The crash of Flight 3379 reveals deep flaws in the standard hiring practices of U.S. airlines.
42:29Background information on pilots is almost never shared between airlines.
42:36If I was to apply for a job somewhere, they would check my references.
42:40This is a pilot.
42:41Isn't it important that we find out if this person is competent enough?
42:47We asked for it in 88.
42:4990.
42:52Tragically, the case of Flight 3379 is not unprecedented.
42:57And again in 93.
43:00In three previous accidents, the NTSB recommended that records from previous employers
43:06be made available to a pilot's current employers.
43:09Fourth time's the charm.
43:13Now, for the fourth time, the NTSB recommends that U.S. airlines conduct
43:19better background checks on prospective pilots.
43:23But still, no changes are made to federal regulations.
43:29I felt like I had to do something.
43:32I had to speak for these 15 people that couldn't speak.
43:35And I went and spoke in front of Congress.
43:40In 1996, two years after the crash, Congress passes the Pilots' Record Information Act
43:47to ensure airlines have access to previous companies' pilot records.
43:51The chances of a pilot falling through the cracks, as this captain did,
43:56have been reduced because of that legislation.
43:58It's unfortunate for that to happen, but that's what it took.