Talk:Alaska Airlines Flight 261

message: I moved the last part of the article from the Alaska Airlines article. WhisperToMe 22:25, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The NGC documentary on flight 261 is much more critical about the part Alaska Airlines played in the crash than this article. It mentions verifiable facts about fraud with maintenance reports, poor maintenance standards and so on. It also mentions that Alaska Airlines was fined for irregularities and fraud with maintenance reports and that two maintenance supervisors were suspended.
It also mentions that the trim control screw was not replaced by Alaska Airlines when it was scheduled and that a maintenance manager blowed the whisle about Alaskan's maintenance practices.
We can add this to the article, and it can all be well-referenced.  There are newspaper articles I'll find from the FBI raiding (with search warrants) Alaska Air maintenence offices in Oakland in an investigation related to the accident, as well as in the NTSB final report they talk about how Alaska was able to get waivers from the FAA to only lubricate the jackscrew after long intervals.  Basically, Alaska would tell the FAA POI in Seattle ("principle operations investigator" I think) to approve whatever they wanted or else they would pull strings and have him re-posted to Alaska.  When he refused to let them fly over the Bering Straight without liferafts, they DID have him reassigned to some horrible place.  I'm not kidding; read the NTSB final report. Lipsticked Pig 23:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  National Geographics documentary criticism 

message: Article says "This was 1800 flight hours beyond Boeing's recommended interval of 7200 flight hours." What has Boeing got to do with it? Should this read "McDonnell Douglas"? Icd 04:55, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Boeing inherited the type certificate for the MD-80 when they bought McDonnell Douglas. --mcpusc 05:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alaska Airlines MD-80 maintenance program 

message: After deciding to divert to LAX, the pilots engaged in a rediculous conversation with the Alaska Air dispatcher, who wanted them to continue on to SFO because he did not want them to disrupt "the flow" (schedule).  The CVR transcript has the pilots' incredulous reaction to this.
Company maintenance over the radio was worse than useless (they are the ones who suggested using both the "suitcase handles" and "pickle switches" to unjam the trim whuch cause the inital dive), and then never provided any useful information or advice.
After decideding to divert to LAX, the pilots requested Alaska dispatcher there to calculate their landing weight (since they were pretty busy just flying the airplane); those personnel never radioed back that information (which they calculated wrong anyway).
Even with the extended lubrication maintenence interval, the jackscrew would have been fine if it had been properly serviced.
The aircrew were specifically commended by the NTSB for their decision to remain over water while they troubleshooted their problems (thus potentially saving lives on the ground).
Lipsticked Pig 23:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Judging by the photographs of the recovered jackscrew it hadn't been greased in years. Presumably the aerodynamic loads on the tailplane then stripped the threads due to the greatly increased wear, as you can see the stripped coil of the nut threads alongside the jackscrew threads. I would have thought that just operating the trim motors on the ground with the engines not running should have given an audible sign that something was wrong with the lubrication of the unit. It must have made a hell-of-a-screech in operation with all that metal-on-metal contact. The electrical load on the trim motors would have been higher than normal too, as they tried to cope with the additional friction.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.251.107 (talk) 15:17, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fun facts we should add 

message: um, not sure what I should say.  You stated that "You can not unilaterally alter an article, like you did, without some sort of consensus. Are you an Alaska Airlines employee???"  I think I can only respond, NO and NO, quite obviously.
Not that I'm happy about where I went with it.  Too long, but what can you do?  Its a complex series of events that doesn't lend itself well to summury. I'd like to keep all the quotes in because they are juicy, but I'll listen to CONSENSUS Lipsticked Pig 04:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The changes you made are far too many.   The article needs the information to be verified.  Whatever can not be verified is considered original research. The quotes have to be verbatim quotes and must not have any commentary to them.  Fighting for Justice 04:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

text: All right.  I'm willing to see what you can add, but can you please keep the edits right down into one single edit, instead of one by one?  You can see a preview of what the article will ultimately look like as much as you like.  Then once you get the article to look like you want it to save it. Fighting for Justice 04:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

text: ok. Thank You for understanding.  Fighting for Justice 04:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Revert by Fighting for Justice

message: OK, reverted the opening paragraphs to my last version. This seems to me pretty obvious; you can use the NTSB Executive Summary as a template for any aircraft accident and get all the pertinent details out, quickly and succinctly, by simply cut-n-pasting. The first paragraph is the accident description from the summary slightly abridged, and the second paragraph contains (a) non-technical summary of the accident cause(s), and (b), the probable cause verbatim from the final report. BOTH paragraphs are fully supported by the single citation given.
The rest of the article needs a serious re-write as well.  There is not a single citation, anywhere, for any of the facts given in the article. Some statements as written are absolutely wrong. Under "Initial flight segment" it reads "After takeoff and initial climb, the airplane was set on autopilot for the first two hours of the flight and the aircrew did not detect any discrepancy with the stabilizer"; both statements are wrong, see page 2 and page 128 of the final report.  I haven't looked at the later, more technical, paragraphs. Being that this article is unusual in that we can basically get all are facts from one source, the final report, it might lend itself to having footnotes with page numbers, and then we can give a citations FOR EVERY SINGLE FACT.
I propose the article get split onto three main sections; "Accident flight", "Investigation" and "Conclusions". This is similar to (any) accident report, and is the same type of narrative flow you'll see on (example) "Air Crash Investigation". This is not surprising, as such a structure lends itself well to a logical progression through the factual evidence.  The article does not have to grow much larger to accomplish this.
The article desperately needs graphics, which should not be hard to do. One diagram of the jackscrew assembly is far better than any paragraph (though we should have both). I'll add them in as I go along.
I'll re-write the "Initial flight segment" next; please discuss any problems you see with me before just reverting.  Unfortunately the CVR quotes I tried using do make the article too long, so I'll have to drop them.  Lipsticked Pig 06:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Re-write of opening 

message: I re-wrote this just now; as I said before the were some factual inaccuracies which needed to be removed:
"the horizontal stabilizer functioned normally during the initial climb out of Puerto Vallarta." (it stopped working about 2/3 into the initial climb)
"After takeoff and initial climb, the airplane was set on autopilot for the first two hours of the flight" (autopilot was disengaged about 10 minutes into the flight, and the A/C was flown manually for the next 2 hours)
"and the aircrew did not detect any discrepancy with the stabilizer" (the final report states several things that would have alerted the flight crew to the out-of-trim situation, including an annuciator warning light, the extra force required on the controls to mantain the desired attitude, and the autopilot's adjustment to the elevators to compensate for the jam)
I think its really important to start the first sentence off with a time of takeoff.  Currently, in the article we have relative references such as "Less than a minute after that decision, about ten minutes after the first dive...", but never any actual times. Start the flight description off with "13:37 PST" and now any reader can reference that and get a clearer timeline of events.
I think it is important include the divert "debate" that occured between the pilots and dispatcher; so did the NTSB as 2 of the official findings in the final report were about this.
Lemme know what you think! Lipsticked Pig 19:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Re-write of "Initial flight segment"

message: I wasn't happy with the statement that jam was freed because "...the shearing of threads in the stabilizer's gimbal nut."  I'll need to look again, but I think there was some uncertainty to that; the threads might have been sheared off completely already (before the first dive), and the thread debris, stuck in the nut, was causing the jam.(<---- I was wrong, that is why the jam was freed Lipsticked Pig 17:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Re-write of "The first dive and recovery"

message: "Less than a minute after that decision, about ten minutes after the first dive, an "extremely loud bumping sound" was recorded on the cockpit voice recorder and the aircraft entered a second and final dive. The sound recorded was the impact loading of the stabilizer with the tip fairing brackets. This impact was caused by the low cycle fatigue fracture of the stabilizer jackscrew's torque tube and lower mechanical stop." <---This is inaccurate and is mixing up from the report the descriptions of 2 events (a) the impact of the stabilizer with the tip fairing brackets (b) the failure of those brackets and the initiation of the final dive (see the final report pages 134-135).
"The threads on the gimbal nut (known as an acme nut) wore smooth to the point of being unable to hold the stabilizer in a set position and thus the stabilizer could move on its own under the aerodynamic loads." <---This had already happened long before the second dive, and shouldn't be in this section.
"This impact was caused by the low cycle fatigue fracture of the stabilizer jackscrew's torque tube and lower mechanical stop." <--This, while factually accurate, needs to have further explanation, wikilinked terms, or better yet written in non-technical english, as do all the later sections.
" The last radio contact with the aircraft occurred while the plane was passing 17,000 feet at a low speed of 119 knots." <---placing this at the end of the paragraph is deceptive; that radio communicatioon occured before all the events listed previously in the section
Lipsticked Pig 01:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with "Second dive" section

message: I'm done re-writing the "Accident flight" section, and am fairly happy how it turned out. However I'm not in the aviation industry, and when reading these accident reports I get confused just like anyone else. It's probable that I've made some factual errors/assumptions that need to be corrected. Please if you have read the accident report and see some errors, fix them. Also, I made plenty of judgement calls about what should/should not be included, your opinion might be quite different.
The Analysis section needs to be completely re-written as well. I think these are the greatest problems with it right now are:
1. The complete lack of citations for all the content
2. The incredibly technical nature of the content; an encyclopedic article needs to summarize these in plain english.  I'd have to call these sections as readable as the actual accident report, which is not a good thing. 
3. The lack of graphics, many of which are available through the 
4. Can somebody fix this image of a maitenance check in the 
investigation section???
NTSB
Lipsticked Pig 08:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Further work on this article

message: A woman on the coast took a photo of ASA 261 right before impact. I've seen the photo, grainy but dramatic, the plane is inverted and nose-down. She didn't even realize she had captured the aircraft until the film was developed sometime later. I can't find it anywhere, and thought I was remembering it wrong, but in the NTSB witness statement report they mention her and the photo, so it does exist. Can anyone find a usuable version of it? Lipsticked Pig 17:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The crash photograph...can anyone find it?

message: Inadequate lubrication and end play checks section should explain why insufficient lubrication was applied to the jackscrew assembly during maintenance, and why when lack of lubrication caused excessive wear, that wear was not detected through the "end play" checks.
Extension of maintenance intervals and FAA oversight should discuss how Alaska was able to get FAA approval for the extended maintenance intervals, and how FAA oversight of Alaska was inadequate.
Other issues is self-explanatory
This article needs YOU to fill those out! You can find pretty much all the information you need in the final report under section 2, "Analysis" and section 3.1 "Findings"
Lipsticked Pig 03:25, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Analysis section re-write and further work needed

message: Re-worded some things so I could cite references, added info about the lawsuits (and false paternity allegations). Dropped the stuff about "flight number 261 being retired", etc. It seems common in these air crash articles, but what's the point? The fact that Flight XXX is now Flight XXY isn't really "notable" If you feel strongly about it, please reference it before putting it back in. If Alaska is in the process of retiring its MD-80 fleet (as previously was written), I would like it back in there, but that too was unreferenced, and I see that it came from the Alaska Airlines wikipedia article. I don't know about you, but I don't trust wikipedia as a source :) Another thing you might want to add (you can reference it from Snopes.com) is the internet rumor that the plane stayed aloft just long enough for someone to finish reciting aloud the lord's prayer. I find that rumor ironic, since for the cost of those damn prayer cards Alaska used to put in your lunchbox, they could have instead adequately lubricated the jackscrew.
The 3 year investigation by the FBI into Alaska maintenance (prompted by the allegations of a whistleblower) should be in this section; some points to emphasize would be that the investigation started long before the crash (i.e., was independed and not necessarily related), and that no charges were filed (but I would directly quote the U.S. Attorney's comments at the conclusion of the Grand Jury, whose comments could be interpreted either way). You can reference a Seattle PI article that is available from the external links. 
Also, I'd like to say that the photo of the memorial sundial is quite beautiful, and am very thankful for the person who took and uploaded it. In an objective, NPOV encyclopedia, a special photo like that is a way to convey more than just "facts". Lipsticked Pig 18:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Legacy (Aftermath) section

message: I've put in several requests for use of a photo of the actual aircraft (checkout jetphotos.net) to place at top of the infobox.  Hopefully one photographer will grant permission...if you have a good one please put in it the article. Lipsticked Pig 04:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo of N963AS

message: I've added a section (moved to within "Aftermath") that tells of how advanced fee fraud ("419") scammers are citing this incident in their scam emails.  This is notable and valuable information for people who may be researching this incident due to the fact that they received a scam email mentioning it.  Added citation to article detailing scam.
:I am greatly amused by a 419 scam e-mail I just got referencing this crash and pointing to the wiki page as information on it. 83.46.62.208 (talk) 23:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  419 Scam section 

message: I removed the redundant wikilinks for the airports, etc., in the infobox (they are in the lead directly to the left of the infobox, see MOS:LINK) and the national flags (distracting and useless; let's assume that people reading the English Wikipedia know of United States and Mexico). Lipsticked Pig (talk) 10:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crash Infobox 

message: Why does Linda Knight redirect here? Jasynnash2 (talk) 16:55, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirected - Error?

message: I got this email today. It was from address
Good day.
I am Barrister. Michael Wood, lawyer to late Mr.Morris Thompson who lost 
his life in plane crash involving Alaska Airline's Flight 261, which 
crashed on January 31st.2000,including his wife and only daughter. Mr. 
Morris Thompson
aged 61 hailed from Fairbanks, Alaska in United States of America.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/
Before the demise of my client, he disclosed to me his account 
status,which amounted to  $10.5million (Ten million five hundred thousand 
American dollars).
He also handed over to me some vital copies of documents regarding this 
fund In London.
I  was at the last burial rights on February,5th,2000 to pay my final 
respect,there I made thorough inquiries about his relatives  but all in 
vain. Just two weeks ago, I received a routine  notification from the 
finance house  concerning this fund or they  will have it confiscated and 
as an unclaimed fund.
MY REQUEST;
I want you to stand in as the next of kin to late Mr. Morris Thompson.
Be informed that upon successful transfer of this money into your 
account,you shall have 35% of it as your share,15% as the lawyers share 
and the rest sent back to the lawyer for distribution to any charity 
organization as
requested by my late client.
Please include the following in your reply and you can contact me on my 
mails;
address or
address
(1.)Your Name in full.
(2.)A reliable phone and Fax number
(3.)Occupation
(4)contact address in full.
(5)Age.
Yours sincerely,
Barrister Michael Wood
Ontheriver (talk) 21:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have just received the email.  I'm going to suggest a 419 warning in the linked #Passengers section, not just near the bottom in the Aftermath section, which seems some people potential 419 victims may miss it. 66.114.93.6 (talk) 21:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  EMAIL SCAM  

message: This website has been added to the external links section for this article and several other plane crash articles.  It offers users an opportunity to download, for a fee, a copy of the CVR recording from the accident flight.  Since CVR recordings are confidential and only rarely made public, I very much doubt that this website actually has real copies of these CVR recordings.  I'm not eager to give the website operators any money in order to verify this, though.  If anyone can confirm this website is fraudulent, it should be removed from this, and all of wikipedia's other plane crash articles.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.22.202.147 (talk) 23:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: http://www.cockpitvoicerecordings.com

message: Would someone braver than I remove or shorten the two paragraphs about William Knudson and his partner, Brad. It is practially a biography. Everyone else has received a single line as to why they are noteworthy, but about them we get to read of warm hearts and their bed and breakfast business. I'd like to be sensitive, but this article shouldn't become a shrine.
87.114.120.152 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 14:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  A eulogy in Notable People 

message: I reverted this misplaced and unreferenced edit (diff) and put it here if anyone wants to try and source it. 
ADD: There is one problem with this STORY... near the time of this crash, there was a local news story of the mechanic who had previously inspected the Jack Screw. He made a report to his supervisor that the Jack Screw should be replaced. Supervisor rejected the mechanic recommendation. After the crash the mechanic was terminated.   Lateg (talk) 23:16, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  unsourced 

message: See Talk:Alaska Airlines Flight 261/Stuff
WhisperToMe (talk) 16:10, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Stuff

message: According to what I read, he appears to have found an issue with the airplane component at fault but his assessment was dismissed. A source would be:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20011220&slug=alaska20 --76.69.142.123 (talk) 06:57, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The Mayday episode mentioned that guy. Yeah, he needs to be mentioned. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:   please check the article WhisperToMe (talk) 20:12, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not even a single mention of the whistleblower John Liotine? 

message: There's one sentence that seems to lack support: At one point, unable to raise the nose, they attempted to fly the aircraft "upside-down".
This implies that the pilots deliberately tried to invert the plane, or at least keep it inverted after an unintended roll. Certainly the aircraft was inverted. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the inversion was deliberate. The CVR transcript (which is the only reference cited by this sentence) seems consistent with the notion that the inversion was unintended and that the pilots were trying to right the aircraft.
So unless anyone knows of any citable source saying that the inversion was deliberate, I think this sentence should be changed. Especially because it can be confused with the movie Flight, where, in a similar situation, the pilots do deliberately attempt to invert the aircraft.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xamnidar (talk • contribs) 20:27, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attempt to fly the aircraft upside-down? 

message: So what would have happened if the Stabilizer did not point down after the pilots tried one final time to release it? Could they have landed safely at LAX?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.88.19.103 (talk) 22:29, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  The jack screw was stripped completely from the nuts, and was detached. This essentially disconnected the front of the horizontal stabilizer and allowed it to pitch up (or down) to it's stops.  Since the jack screw mechanical connection was completely broken, there was absolutely nothing that could have been done - no matter how many times they tried to run the trim motors.  It was doomed.  98.194.39.86 (talk) 11:59, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Final Attempt to free the Stabilizer. 

message: It seems to be difficult to find an image of William "Bill" Tansky, the co-pilot, online. I found one on Newspapers.com:
*  - Clipping showing Tansky's portrait, clipping of full article
I do not know if the image is a PD US Military image or not, but if it is, it may be included in this article. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photograph of Bill Tansky 

message: In the section "Second dive and crash", the crash location is given as "A few seconds before 16:22 (00:22 UTC), Flight 261 hit the Pacific Ocean at high speed, about 14 mi (23 km; 12 nmi) offshore, between the coastal city of Port Hueneme, California, and Anacapa Island." but the total distance between the shore at Port Hueneme and the closest of the Anacapa Islands is only 12 miles, or about 19 km. Looking at the maps in the article, I would guess that the actual distance from land was 14 kilometers, not miles. That fits nicely with the location shown in the two maps. So possibly a case of "lost in conversion", with the correct number, but wrong distance unit, was used. 94.254.62.88 (talk) 21:58, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That was added in 2018 here as 14 miles. The NTSB report says "The main wreckage was found at 34° 03.5' north latitude and 119° 20.8' west longitude." Which looks like about 9.5 miles off shore according to Google maps. IDK where that person got 14 mi and it's not cited, so I've removed it. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:30, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crash location inconsistency 

message: This article remarks that Alaska Airlines has retired the flight number used for this accident flight. This is actually common practice in the airline industry perhaps out of respect those who lost their lives on the flights in question or, just as likely, in recognition that people might not want to fly on the same numbered flight as one that met an unfortunate end.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:801:300:7520:C805:B94C:AF26:4712 (talk) 20:49, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Flight status"