Reports suggest confusion caused Colombia crash

April 17, 1996
Web posted at: 12 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet may have crashed into a mountain near Cali, Colombia, last December because the cockpit crew became confused about their location and misunderstood instructions from the ground controller, documents released Tuesday indicate.

American Airlines Flight 965 from Miami smashed into a mountainside December 20, killing 160 people. The Boeing 757 was only a few minutes away from its destination, Cali, when it went down.

Colombian investigators have reached no conclusion on the cause of the disaster, but a set of investigators' reports was released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB transcript of cockpit conversations show the crew acknowledged a clearance to land at Cali airport and a request to report when they passed a radio navigational beacon called Tulua.

But the pilots began their descent for a landing at Cali, not knowing they were already past Tulua. Conversations gleaned from the cockpit recorders indicate confusion about their location.

First Officer Don Williams: "Uh, where are we ... "

Captain Nicholas Tafuri: "Let's go right to, uh, Tulua first of all. OK?"

Williams: "Yeah, where we headed?"

The plane then apparently began the fatal left turn that led it into the mountainside.

Ground controller Nelson Rivera Ramirez told investigators he was confused by a call from the pilots saying they were 38 miles from Cali and asking if they should proceed directly to Tulua.

Ramirez said the crew's question didn't make any sense because the distance they gave indicated the plane had already passed the beacon. So, he repeated the clearance to land.

Asked what he would have said to a Spanish-speaking pilot in the same predicament, Ramirez said he would have told them that "their request made no sense, that their request was illogical and incongruent." But he said he did not know how to convey those thoughts in English.

CNN Correspondent Carl Rochelle and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related stories

• Pilot slip may have kept plane from escaping crash - December 28, 1995
• Black box reveals last moments before crash - December 28, 1995

Related sites

• American Airlines
• Federal Aviation Administration

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