National Airlines Flight 193
National Airlines Flight 193 crashed in Escambia Bay, east of Pensacola Regional Airport, on May 8, 1978.
Contents
Flight background
Flight 193, a Boeing 727-235, was a scheduled flight from Miami, Florida to Pensacola, with scheduled stops at Melbourne and Tampa, Florida, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. En route from Mobile to Pensacola, there were 52 passengers and 6 crew members aboard.[1]
At approximately 9:20 PM, Flight 193 crashed into Escambia Bay, about three nautical miles from the Pensacola Regional Airport. The aircraft came to rest in twelve feet of water.[1]
Causes of crash
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the crash was due to pilot and crew error:
| The flightcrew's unprofessionally conducted nonprecision instrument approach, in that the captain and the crew failed to monitor the descent rate and altitude, and the first officer failed to provide the captain with required altitude and approach performance callouts. The captain and first officer did not check or utilize all instruments available for altitude awareness and, therefore, did not configure the aircraft properly and in a timely manner for the approach. The captain failed to comply with the company's GPWS flightcrew response procedures in a timely manner after the warning began. The flight engineer turned off the GPWS warning 9 seconds after it began without the captain' s knowledge or consent. Contributing to the accident was the radar controller's failure to provide advance notice of the start-descent point which accelerated the pace of the crew's cockpit activities after the passage of the final approach fix. | ||
—NTSB Aircraft Accident Report | ||
Rescue operations
A nearby barge assisted in recovery efforts. Three passengers drowned while trying to exit the aircraft. While the aircraft was intact, it was unsalvageable due to water damage and associated corrosion.
Flight crew
- Captain: George T. Kunz
- First Officer: Leonard G. Sanderson, Jr.
- Flight Engineer: James K. Stockwell
- Flight Attendants: Carol Crawford, Carl Greenwood, and Deborah Verplank