Final Destination: Disaster: What Really Happened to Eastern Airlines

258 Pages·2014·1.14 MB·English

by  George Jehn New York

Legal Disclaimer: Note: In this book the author is referring only to events
surrounding the airline company then known as Eastern Airlines that ceased
operating in 1991. In no way does the information herein reflect, in any way or
in any manner, upon any new airline or other entity, which may start up at some
time in the future with the same name and utilize the same or similar advertising
or trademarks as the airline that ceased operations in 1991.
CHANGING LIVES PRESS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
through the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-9894529-6-0
Copyright © 2014 by George Jehn All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission from the author.
Cover design by Michael Short Author photo courtesy of John H. Taylor
Color Photography by Allen Gerber Interior layout by Gary A. Rosenberg •
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Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
eISBN: 9780990439608
CONTENTS
Prologue
PART I The Background
PART II The Meetings
PART III The Timeline
PART IV Subsequent, Related Events
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To the many thousands
of former Eastern employees
who never knew the complexity
of events surrounding them,
but who paid dearly.
PROLOGUE
O
n January 1, 1985, at approximately 8:38 p.m., an Eastern Airlines
Boeing 727 Flight 980 piloted by Captain Larry Campbell on a routine
flight from Asuncion, Paraguay, to La Paz, Bolivia, crashed into the Andes
Mountains outside the La Paz, Bolivia John F. Kennedy International Airport.
All twenty-nine souls on board were killed.
Normally, following any airliner crash, an extensive probe to determine the
cause would be undertaken by the investigative agencies of the countries
involved—in this case, the United States and Bolivia—as well as Eastern
Airlines and other interested parties. But this time, no timely inquiry was ever
launched, even though public statements to the contrary emanating from the
highest government and Eastern sources were widely—and, as I subsequently
discovered, deceptively—circulated.
Some victims' relatives, frustrated by this inaction, wanted to embark on
their own trek to the crash site. They were eventually dissuaded by one Eastern
pilot who mounted his own expedition to try to get some answers. Meanwhile,
the U.S. government’s and Eastern’s delaying tactics helped insure that the
reasons for the crash would remain forever buried on a barren and bleak South
American mountainside.
Eleven months later, winter had again arrived in the northeast, and while
sitting in the cozy warmth of my study in front of a blazing fire on a bitter cold
December evening, I delved into the United States National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) papers that were finally issued on the Flight 980 crash.
The more I read, the more troubled I became. I envisioned the pitch black sky on
that fateful night, only illuminated intermittently by lightning crackling from a
thunderstorm visible on the jet’s radar directly ahead, and pictured the frigid
snow swirling beneath the 727 like a stealthy whirlwind in a silent, desolate
landscape more than nineteen-thousand feet above sea level. The closest bastion
of warmth was the flight’s next stopover, La Paz, a little over fifty miles away
and closing fast. But Flight 980 never made it there, its final and silent tomb
instead a windswept ridge in the Bolivian Andes. I wondered what might have
transpired in the final moments between the pilots’ acknowledgment of a descent
clearance to 18,000 feet in preparation for landing at La Paz and the jet’s
devastating impact with Mount Illimani.
At the time, as a sixteen-year veteran Eastern pilot, I was very troubled, first
by the NTSB’s initial refusal to conduct any investigation, then after they were
forced to do so, their inexplicable delay of over ten months to even send an
expedition to the crash site. I had just finished poring over the partially redacted
NTSB “after action” report on this useless trek, which raised more questions
than any it possibly answered. Never before had I witnessed so many
uninvestigated possible causes and unanswered questions in light of such a
serious disaster. There were too many contradictions, too much information that
was conveniently ignored, overlooked, or simply cast aside, never to be
examined by that U.S. government agency, at least not publicly.
No one had lifted a finger to discover what had really caused this crash.
Deepening the mystery, this was the only time since the founding of the
NTSB that the cause of a crash of a United States commercial jet airliner had not
undergone intense scrutiny. In addition, other Eastern pilots had subsequently
reported a number of close calls on their South American flights. Although it
was these items that originally aroused my interest, I discovered that indeed
there was more: something was very different about the manner in which the
Flight 980 disaster was handled—or mishandled—which set it apart from every
other airliner crash. So much so that I subsequently launched my own in-depth
investigation, pondering why only the union that represented the pilots wanted to
uncover what caused this disaster.
Just then, my private phone line unexpectedly rang. At the time I had no idea
this was a call that would ultimately change the destinies of hundreds of
thousands of people. I picked up the telephone, unaware that nothing would ever
be the same again.
PART I
THE
BACKGROUND