Crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401
A burnt out light bulb leads to a major disaster.
On the night of December 29th, 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 took off from New York and headed towards Miami, Florida. Less than three hours later the aircraft reached Florida. Unfortunately it did so as a scattered wreck over the marshes of Florida's Everglades. One hundred and three lives were lost.
The pilots were highly experienced, yet their response to a faulty light bulb led to the crash of the giant aircraft . Poor utilisation / management of the resources available to the pilots were a significant contributory factor to the crash.
This website will take you through the flight made by Eastern Airlines Flight 401 using a transcript of the "black box" recording of pilot conversations minutes prior to the crash. The hope is that you will live through the drama and pick out the errors that led to a major disaster, and perhaps prevent similar errors occurring in your area of practice.
Though the crash of Flight 401 occurred over thirty years ago, it is still remembered as a classic case where appropriate resource management could have prevented disaster. There are important lessons from that crash that are very still relevant today in aviation (cockpit crew resource management) , medical practice ( specially anesthesia crisis resource management) and other fields.
(Title photo thanks to Howard Chaloner)