25 years since fateful Alaskan Airlines 261 airplane crash with Redlands pilot

-And its aftermath, chapter 1

It seems eerie that a plane falls from a sky devoid of any crazy winds, no thunder, no hurricanes. And still, that is what happened one late afternoon 25 years ago.

A friend of mine (Thanks Mark!) sent me a picture in December last year of a plaque on a Sundial Memorial in Oxnard. The plaque said: Ted Thompson - pilot age 53 - Redlands, CA. “This monument honors and remembers for all time the eighty eight passengers and crew members who lost their lives.” I tell Mark that I will look into it. I procrastinate (any writer’s worse trait) and realize at the end of January, this is it. This is the day it happened, 25 years ago.

And here we are two months later. I have poured over micro films at A.K. Smiley Library for articles from 25 years ago in Redlands Daily Facts, I have read scores of articles about the crash online, studied the final report from NTSB and talked to pilot friends of Ted’s and his wife. Here is the story that follows -in several chapters. One chapter will be published each week, subscribe (it’s free) to get each chapter in your email.

In this chapter we follow how Redlands Daily Facts covered the tragic event.

It was a clear blue sky that carried the Alaskan Airlines Flight 261 with 83 passengers and five crew members on board on January 31, 2000 from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and Seattle. Pilot and Captain of Flight 261 was Ted M. Thompson, a Redlands citizen of 30 years. He had worked for Alaska Airlines for close to 20 years, and was an experienced pilot of 53 years of age. He had a total of 10,400 DC-9 flying hours with Alaska Airlines. But that afternoon the flight took a nose dive from the blue skies to the deep waters eight miles outside of the Santa Barbara Channel by Port Hueneme.

The first article in Redlands Daily Facts the next day on February 1, 2000 describes the facts that were known the day after the tragedy. For example, that one of the two pilots radioed Los Angeles moments before the crash and asked to be diverted back because of a problem with ‘the stabilizer trim.’ A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report concluded previous records of MD-80 planes had been falsified, though this particular plane had not been part of an investigation. Other accidents with similar planes are listed.

One of the first bodies (out of four) fished out of the water was an infant.

The night of the accident a local Oxnard artist, Dave, raised a wooden cross on the beach. The cross was covered in flowers, a white plastic angel stood at the base. There was a lit candle.

Two days after the accident, relatives began to gather in Port Hueneme and Los Angeles to share their grief. Tapes obtained from the plane captured conversations of the crew trying to troubleshoot and regain control of the aircraft, to no avail. For 11 minutes the pilots struggled to gain control of the plane.

Thompson’s 21 year old son, Fred, spoke in front of Redlands Police Station on Cajon Street. “It would have made Ted happy to see how many people saw him as a father, brother and a friend,” Fred said.

Finding any survivors dwindled to zero, the water was 59 degrees after all. The search zone was 22 miles by this time. 11 relatives sifted sands in their hands and looked out at the ocean where their loved ones were missing. Then they scooped up sand in foam cups from the nearby Pierside Seafood Cafe as keepsakes.

On the third day the search for survivors was called off. Pilot Ted Thompson’s service was scheduled for February 5, 2000. A large sport fishing boat took 20 relatives to the crash site.

“I think the pilot was a hero. He could have taken us out. I think the pilot deliberately put it in the ocean so he wouldn’t hit us,” said Oxnard resident, Ruth Hirsh. New detail emerged: The plane hit the water in one piece. “Spinning, nose-down, continuous roll, corkscrewing and inwards,” said a pilot witness.

An early report by The Seattle Times said the flight had horizontal stabilizer problems going to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. But that was immediately corrected by the airline spokesman, “We stand by what we said earlier this week, which is that we’re not aware of any maintenance anomalies with this aircraft.”

On day four the second black box was found. Underwater robots also found a large piece of the tail on the ocean floor, including larger pieces 640 feet under water. That day 200 friends and relatives gathered on the beach and also inside the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station away from reporters. There they held a one and half hour memorial, a helicopter flew to the crash site and dropped flowers and photos. A separate group of Alaska Airlines employees laid flowers and walked on the beach. Flight number 261 was officially retired and Alaska Airlines employees everywhere held a minute of silence at 4:36pm, near the time of the crash the previous Monday. There was also a public memorial that day at the Port Hueneme Pier where another 200 Oxnard residents showed up with balloons, flowers and candles.

This was the day that investigators looked into the possibility that “The pilots could have inadvertently put the plane into its fatal dive by following procedures for correcting a stabilizer problem,” as explained in the Redlands Daily Facts article on the front page, February 4, 2000. In twenty years before that time aviation records had found 20 in-flight problems with stabilizers that were serious enough to be reported to the FAA or National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). One third of those flights made emergency landings. This would be the first case of a rare stabilizer problem serious enough to cause a crash.

Saturday, the fifth day after the crash, was the day of the memorial service at the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside for Captain Thompson, First Officer Bill J. Tansky and flight attendants, Allison J. Shanks, Craig M. Pulanco and Kristin Mills and seven other airline employees present on the flight as passengers.

The article that day mentioned that: “The ceremony included equal amounts of laughter that coworkers said was usually offered by Thompson, [Tansky] and other crew members.” The ceremony concluded with a ‘missing man formation’ of four vintage AT-6 planes in the air. The second time the planes flew by, one plane peeled away as a symbol of Flight 261.

A separate service for the passengers was held in Malibu at Pepperdine University.

Travel agent and column writer, Ilene Cox, wrote about her fear of flying on the sixth day after the accident. As a fellow Redlander she knew the Thompson family, since her daughter was a cheerleader at Redlands High School with Beth Thompson, the younger sister to Fred. More memorials were held that day, with a service at Los Angeles International Airport, reported the following day.

Day 7, a week after the plane crash, the story was back on the front page. That day it was made clear that the debris covers the size of a football field on the ocean floor. The NTSB wanted a detailed picture of the debris before bringing pieces to the surface, and that was not done yet. Many friends and relatives began to return home, though most refused to fly with Alaska Airlines. In the previous week an Alaska Airlines MD-83 jetliner returned shortly after takeoff when the pilot reported similar problems, and an American Airlines MD-83 was also forced to return that week.

Remains of the victims would take up to six months to be identified. Navy crews had begun to collect “Several hundred remains.”

On day 8, yet another MD-80 flight had to do an emergency landing. This happened exactly a week after the fatal accident, on a flight coming from Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, it had landed in San Francisco and was outbound towards Seattle. Just like Flight 261.

NTSB still photographed debris and would afterwards decide which pieces would be hauled up. That day revealed that the pilots were struggling with the stabilizer problem for 30 minutes (as opposed to 11 minutes reported earlier).

Day 9 the previous day’s story of an emergency landing in San Francisco is on the front page of RDF. Flight 289 landed safely at 7:45 p.m., all 88 passengers and crew were un-injured. This gave the reporter a chance to describe similarities and differences in the two flights. Both flights were following the same flight route, were part of the MD-80s series and both had problems at the tail end of the plane. Flight 289 though had problems in the left engine of the tail area, not the stabilizer.

Passengers on Flight 289 were unfazed. Their emergency hadn’t felt troubling. The plane was not spinning, the plane turned around and landed safely.

That day Boeing planned to inspect their MD-80’s fleet. Three other airlines had already begun inspecting their fleet. 70 airlines worldwide flew about 2,000 of these kind of planes. Of course Alaska Airlines was at the forefront of this inspection. Their Chairman published a letter in major west coast newspapers voicing gratitude for public support. FAA supported all of the investigations.

14 days after the accident, the before mentioned inspections showed 21 planes with tail wing jackscrews irregularities with another nine jets grounded under a FAA order. The Flight 261 had damaged threads and metal shavings to the jackscrew recovered from the depth of the ocean. NTSB still had not determined whether that caused the crash. FAA said, “[It] is premature to draw any conclusions.”

A day later, 15 days after the crash, 22 planes were found with jackscrew problems, eight jets remained on the ground. Most of the 1,100 examined planes returned to the skies. Included in the investigations besides M-80s were MD-90s, DC-9s and Boeing 717 jets.

At a corporate memorial service two weeks after the crash, 3,500 people from Alaska Airlines and sister company Horizon Airlines paid their respects to the co-workers lost in the crash. Washington Governor Gary Locke and senator Slade Gorton (R) spoke at the Seattle event. We learned that besides the five crew members working the plane, the seven crew members who were passengers on board also had 32 family members and friends with them, all vacationing in Mexico.

“We gather to celebrate all five brave crew members, heroes all and consummate heroes who did everything in their power - everything - to save their stricken aircraft and care for their passengers.” said John Kelly, Chairman and CEO of Alaskan Airlines at the time.

46 bodies had been recovered and identified. A day later that number was up by one.

Day 16, it was reported that the previous day FAA was sending 13 suspect jackscrews removed from inspected planes to the NTSB for analysis. NTSB would study the parts for wear and signs of damage to see if new recommendations were needed for the future. For example in changes of maintenance frequency and parts inspections.

49 victims had positively been identified on day 17. Though no new remains had been recovered since February 7th. More details emerged of the Flight 261 tail problem, there was an unusual wear on a nut that anchors the jackscrew which moves the horizontal stabilizer that in turn control the up-and-down movement of the plane’s nose. A NTSB investigator visited Trig Aerospace in Santa Ana which made the jackscrew assemblies.

Day 18, an article referred to LA Times and Seattle Times investigative work. Problems with the McDonnell Douglas facility that built the Alaska Airlines was under scrutiny since an audit in the 1990s found several serious problems: Incomplete work, unauthorized repairs, out-of-date blueprints and production problems. FAA was looking into getting those audits to hand over to NTSB. Another problem was made clear, that Alaska Airlines lubricated jackscrews less frequently than other airlines. Maintenance schedules were approved by FAA on a case-by-case basis. Alaska Airlines said their schedule was based on “demonstrated reliability.”

Day 19, yet another MD-82 jet from Continental Airlines traveling from Las Vegas to Cleveland made an emergency landing with 146 people onboard. A drop in altitude was the cause, crew reported problems with the aileron trim (a control surface on the wing controlling the rolling movements) and thus a different problem than what Flight 261 encountered.

This concludes the coverage in Redlands Daily Facts. A constant three weeks reporting on this horrible accident and what a sober way to report on the facts uncovered each day. I did not find one suggestive comment putting blame on any persons involved with the crahs. Not one.

This was how we read the news 25 years ago.

Next week we will hear from Captain Ted Thompson’s pilot friends who knew him well. They flew with him in the Airforce in the 1970s. Subscribe now to get the next chapter in a week.

Thank you for reading along. I hope you appreciate this kind of investigative work. Please comment below if you learned something new.

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