reigniting conversations about aircraft maintenance standards and regulatory compliance investigations.
The flight in question was being manned by Captain Ted Thompson, 53, and 57-year-old First Officer Bill Tansky, both of whom had flown a collective 12,000 hours in McDonnell Douglas MD-80s aircrafts, AeroTime reported.
But their vast amount of experience couldn’t save them as it was later revealed that part of the plane’s tail assembly failed due to a lack of lubrication of the jackscrew assembly — a mechanical failure that would today likely involve scrutiny under mechanical negligence laws, aviation diagnostics, and maintenance liability claims.
In the resurfaced audio, Captain Thompson was heard telling air traffic control that they were “in a dive”.
He went on to explain: “Not a dive yet but we’ve lost vertical control of our airplane,” highlighting the terrifying descent and lack of pitch control — the kind of scenario now routinely modeled in flight training simulations for emergency preparedness and aerospace risk assessment.
