Disturbing cockpit audio has surfaced, capturing the moment an Alaska Airlines aircraft tragically descended into the Pacific Ocean.
On January 31, 2000, the ill-fated Alaska Airlines Flight 261 was set to fly from Licenciado Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport in Washington.
Although the plane successfully departed Mexico, it failed to reach its intended final stop as it encountered technical issues mid-flight.
Tragically, the aircraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the loss of all 88 individuals on board, comprising 83 passengers, three cabin crew members, and two pilots.
Even after 25 years, this catastrophe remains one of the most severe aviation tragedies in contemporary US history.
As evidence of its lasting impact, conversations about this sorrowful event continue, and cockpit audio has recently emerged on social media platforms.
The flight was under the command of Captain Ted Thompson, 53, and 57-year-old First Officer Bill Tansky, who collectively had clocked over 12,000 flight hours in McDonnell Douglas MD-80s, as reported by AeroTime.
Despite their extensive experience, they were unable to avert disaster. It was later discovered that a failure in part of the plane’s tail assembly was due to inadequate lubrication of the jackscrew assembly.
In the audio that has come to light, Captain Thompson reported to air traffic control that the aircraft was ‘in a dive’.
He elaborated: “Not a dive yet but we’ve lost vertical control of our airplane.”
Thompson mentioned they had regained some control, but First Officer Tanksy countered, stating ‘no we don’t’.
Thompson and Tanksy then attempted to troubleshoot the aircraft to remedy the malfunction.
After a brief silence from the pair, an air traffic control officer spoke with another airborne pilot, thought to have been in an Aero Commander 690A, asking them to ‘keep an eye on [the Alaska Airlines flight]’.
This pilot subsequently alerted air traffic control, noting that the Alaska Airlines jet ‘just started to do a big, huge plunge’.
A second pilot corroborated this observation, describing Flight 261 as being ‘definitely in a nose down position’.
Shortly thereafter, the pilots monitoring the Alaska Airlines plane reported that it had struck the water. The impact completely destroyed the aircraft.
The Federal Aviation Agency conducted a thorough investigation into the crash.
In their release, they noted: “The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of this accident was a loss of airplane pitch control resulting from the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew assembly’s Acme nut threads.
“The thread failure was caused by excessive wear resulting from Alaska Airline’s insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly.”