Pilot Mistake Prompted Emergency Landing

I was unimpressed with 2 go-arounds. C'mon you gotta fly it 1st. Not much of an emergency at 2000 MSL. At only 1400 AGL, if it was only the packs, would it be safely, possible to just throw them on right there and proceed? As for ATC, the "unable" means "unable" sounds like the controller pulled out all the stops to get the 1st one, then 2nd was unable. A little extra flying time so you can land it safely after the 2 inept trys.

While the flying does not appear to be the smoothest, from the information presented, I do not see that the situation was dangerous. In spite of the rapid communication (related to the departure off Love Field) separation was probably not compromised. The media sometimes uses inflammatory words to bulk up a story. While this was not a life & death emergency, I was puzzled by the controllers use of ‘unable’ to the pilot. Wasn’t DFW the airport where the controllers refused to let an American Airline jet, declaring emergency fuel, land straight-in because it would disrupt departures?

Good to know that ASAP worked the way it was designed

Isn't the pressurization on a modern airplane like this activated automatically once airborne, weight on wheels??? If not, and it was forgotten, is an emergency or a return warranted?

If you fly planes long enough, you are bound to make a mistake. Aircraft systems are designed with redundancy to combat this. The mistake that the pilots made is now being studied in training environments. This is why flying is such a safe way to travel. The media is once again blowing this out of proportion.

The article never said altitude or plane type. It looked like a wide body of some type, and I heard 2 grand in there somewhere, but I just can't help but feel that there was more going on there than a simple pressurization problem. You don't know if the pilots reported it under ASAP in order to cover their butts or if it was something totally out of the blue. Like the safety expert/retired pilot in the video, they should have divided the duties in the cockpit and it appeared they did initially from the recording in that the FO answered the tower and identified the problem. They either totally panicked or else they had something totally unexpected overwhelm them. As they were back on duty today with no disciplne due to ASAP, I vote for butt covering. There has got to be more to this story.

Similar incident to one at SLC recently (flight 170 SLC-CDG) where the captain accidently left the cockpit window slightly ajar and had to RTO. Things like this will happen -- just make sure the same mistake doesn't happen again.

Very good reporting from the local affiliate!

With all that said, who wants to fly with any pilot who cant come in NOW and land the FIRST f----- time when your declaring an emergency !!!
un-real, good luck with the in-flight fire. American call Capt, Scully your pilots on this flight BLOW

I wonder if they dumped the masks in the cabin. You'd think that would have made the news when it happened.

The very first audio sounds like they were wearing their own masks, so I'd guess they got the pressurization alarm, put on their masks (as they should) and began to handle the problem. IIRC, the alarm comes on at 14,000. There was probably some point where they realized their screwup, took off their masks once they got down, then got too close and too high to land on the first attempt.

Why they couldn't do it on the second speaks volumes.

Probably needed more time to sync their stories

Would the "pressurization error" be the same switch that was missed and caused the problems with Helios Flight 522?

"all available flight data showed the pressurization control in manual mode and the outflow valve open at a constant angle, and because there was no evidence the flight crew ever changed the pressurization mode, the Board concluded that the pressurization system had been set to manual for the entire flight, which caused the pressurization failure." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

The rule of thumb as I understand it is the plane in trouble gets what they need when they call for it. The work load when an emergency is declared is horrendous. There are check list that must be completed before they land. As an airborne emergency goes this was a minor one. not being able to pressurize means they stay at or below 10,000 feet.


Other than forgetting to check the placement of the pressurization switch the only other thing the pilots might have done wrong was failing to inform controllers that they needed time to complete their checklists. I have heard this over and over again controllers asking pilots if they are ready for an approach and pilots responding they need time to complete their checklists.


Usually what happens is the controllers turn them away from the airport for a few minutes then turns them back towards the airport and asks again. If the pilot responds they are ready the turn them for the final approach if not they are again turned away. I heard none of this from controllers in Dallas/Fort Worth.

In nearly every case of crash incident I've read lately, and I've read too many recently it nearly always goes back to basic flying or lack of it. Needle-ball and airspeed, Fly the airplane first seems to be the answer. It appears that even in the air chance case they concentrated on solving the problem rather than identifying and recovering from the stall. I'm learning that we don't practice stall recovery after primary flight training and once you get into large equipment, some say "big iron" we can't practice because of fuel cost nor simulate because of equipment constraints. The answer seems to be to get back to punching holes in the sky periodically in small airplanes for training. After all Bernoulli's principal still applies on a lesser scale.

am afraid they (the two pilots) would consider themselves as bus drivers rather than as responsible pilots, ie taking decision ahead of the flight for few mintues and overall, not forget their check list obligations !!

Terrible pilotage, just horrendous. The pressurization switch issue is almost forgiveable when measured against the bush league cockpit management. Just as disappointing is that this was quietly brushed under the carpet by the airline (appeasing the union at this sensitive time at AA?) and a desire to make things just go-away. It also sounds that AA in it media relations chose to focus on the pressurization issue and not the quality of decision making. Clearly any logical individual reviewing this would expect suspension and required re-training.

Anybody hear anything on AA Flight 1121 on Oct 4th that had pressurization loss and emergency landing? What happened?

Give me a break! after takeoff being unpressurized is not an emergency, land the plane unpressurized, no big deal, they had clearance to land, do the before landing checklist and be done with it. going around twice? never heard the crew declare an emergency, hence it's not.
yes, AA will include the problem in training ... huh? think it is already there, checklist, standard procedures, but ya gotta appease the media.

@S Armit
Appease the media yes, but I think AAs feeble response speaks volumes. I think they are trying to appease the union in order to get an IOU. They are in all kinds of trouble and this is thinly veiled act of concession for reasons that are contrary to the travelling public.

i am stunned by how NBC, in their complete ignorance, distorted the event! let me rephrase that. this has to be deliberate distortion.There was no emergency. Answering with "...yea, well, ...." doesn't sound in anyway like, " roger,AAL xxx is declaring an emergency .." especially because it was not one. Flying unpressurized in very uncomfortable and can be distracting because the airplane cabin may Be experiencing the same rate of climb as the airplane. NBC implied over and over that there was danger. Never happened . All radio transmissions were taken out of contents to deliberately scare the viewers over and over. The pilots requested vectors so as to be able to return for a landing apparently to reset the pressure controllers and were given approval by a traffic control who in turn alerted other controllers that needed the information. This is all normal procedure. at one point the request was denied, obviously for traffic reasons., And this was complied with. This is not an emergency nor is it dangerous but only normal procedure. all I heard was normal traffic procedures. Doing a go,around is not an emergency either but rather an evaluation that the landing is not sufficiently, within safe parameters. A go -around worldwide is fairly common. I have done several myself during my career. Doing to while working on a problem is not only conceivable but in this case actually happened. Not doing one when the landing is risky is where accidents have happened in the past. Reasons for go -arounds are legion. Weather factors for this for example are numerous and should not be second guessed by people of low intelligence especially when they have an agenda as the media obviously does. Someone in this sorry country has it in for American Airlines since there has been significant negative and unwarranted publicity ( Read "lies"] possibly in an attempt to drive down the stock prices and for somebody to make a sleazy killing? So retirement funds are going to cause bankruptcy? And pilots are regarded with negative publicity because NBC wants what now? and who owns NBC? Has NBC ever acknowledged that 911 is totally misrepresented and needs to be investigated? No of course not.
How anyone would even listen to the media is astonishing given their track record on how they lie, distort, misrepresent, ignore critical information; for example, did you know more soldiers die of suicide than combat
in the Middle East? Is there a clue here they don't want you hear?
Suing this sleazy company is of course a joke since the judges have a record of rejecting these lawsuits. However, if criminal charges are filed using the Constitution there must be a trial in criminal court.
And Flightaware was out to lunch when this story was filed without comment?

HA HA HA...from THRUSTT: "Start out in a taildragger with INOP tagged on every instrument"! I agree with you, best way to learn to fly. Then scale up the automation once you know how to fly first. Very funny....made my saturday

pardon my ignorance. I'm just a low time private pilot. But who cares if they couldn't pressurize the plane? Why were they still working that issue? Why not just land and troubleshoot it on the ground? I don't see why they were so frantically trying to fix that that they were so distracted they missed two approaches. Just stay low and land. What am I missing?

As an SO on a chartered B-747 fright hauler, I recall experiencing a flight with 4 missed approaches. That’s about when I was going to take a #$%& crash ax to the Capt and land the airplane myself!

News media distort facts of a stories.
Remember, if nobody reads or listens to the news organizations report they go out of business.
So the nature of news reporting in any media requires the reporters to distort and/or imbellish (• make (a statement or story) more interesting or entertaining by adding extra details, esp. ones that are not true) the actual story.

It is unsettling to hear it took the pilot three attempts to land at DFW after declaring an emergency on board. And even more so to learn that both pilot and copilot are back on their jobs after some additional training that should not have been necessary for a commercial pilot. The fact that AA made additional training necessary after this for all their pilots does not inspire much confidence in their training programme in the first place.

The bottom line is the aircraft was landed safely.
The crew made an error.
Now, with that said, it appears the crew did not stick to procedure. They may have been preoccupied with the cabin pressure issue instead of one FC member to deal with it, the other to fly the plane. Or, perhaps the crew were both focused on the procedure thus distracting the two pilots.
The news anchor was typically in sensation mode by using words such as "dangerous maneuvers" and "crowded airspace".
The on the scene reporter used the phrase "things got worse"". No they did not. The flight had to go arounds. So what.

Mark Lansdell: Whether the pilot declared an emergency or not, he opted for a return to DFW in view of the cabin pressurization error. Now if that is not an emergency, declared or not, why not just keep on flying until things get really ugly. I still insist that not having been able to land until his third attempt does not speak highly of the pilot´s qualification or AA instruction programme taking into account other planes evidently landed while he was making circuits over the airport space.

Huh???

Flight track for that AAL1646 flight from April 20, 2011 -- http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL1646/history/20110420/1520Z/KDFW/KMIA