A Mistake In Plain Sight | The Crash Of Independent Air Flight 1851

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This is the story of independent air flight 1851. On the on the 8th of february 1989, an independent air 707 was flying from bergamo italy to the puna cana airport in the dominican republic with a stopover at the santa maria airport in the azores. Independent air was a charter airline that was operational from 1966 to 1990. And as you would expect todays flight was a charter flight as well. On the ground at bergamo, the crew worked out how much fuel they'd need for the flight to the dominican republic. They fueled the plane up with 30,000 kilos or 68000 pounds of fuel for the flight, that gave them enough fuel to fly there, divert and hold over airports should they need to do all those things. The plane departed bergamo at 10 am UTC, 2 hours behind schedule as the previous flight was a bit late. At this rate theyd arrive in santa maria at 2:05 pm UTC.

At 1:44 pm flight 1851 requested for a metar for santa maria airport. A metar is a way of reporting meteorological data, Its stands for Meteorological Terminal Aviation Routine Weather Report and it gives you all the data you need to know about the weather at and around the airport in question. Wind speeds, cloud layers that sort of stuff. As per the metar the crew calibrated their altimeters to the QNH value of 1019. The QNH value is used to calculate the altitude of the plane above sea level, theres another value called QFE and that is used to calculate the altitude of the plane above the ground. The QNH and QFE values depend upon where youre flying into and you have to use the values that ATC or the ATIS gives you.

Two minutes later with the plane still in contact with the Santa maria area control the plane was allowed to descend to 4000 feet. At 1:56 pm, the plane passed the echo waypoint, the plane transferred to the tower frequency on 118.1. The tower cleared them in “Independent air 1851, roger reclear to 3000 feet on QNH 1027 and runway will be one niner, expect ILS approach runway one niner report reaching 3000”. The tower had cleared them to 3000 feet. The copilot responded with reclear to 2000 feet and uh 1027, someone else in the cockpit pointed the copilots mistake out, make it 3000 they said. they were cleared to 3000 feet and not 2000. The pilots set the altitude alert system to 2000 feet, the altitude alert system would warn them if they deviated from the set altitude by a significant margin, in most cases it would trigger if the plane was 300 feet below or 900 feet above the selected altitude.

The crew then turned their attention towards the landing preliminary checklist. They ticked off items on the checklist. The copilot told the captain that he was going to tune the ILS, the copilot continued “after 2000 feet well get below these clouds” the captain replied with “in case we dont, 187 is the outbound” referring to the heading that they had to fly incase they didnt sight the runway. At 2:08 and 5 seconds UTC, the GPWS system sounded in the cockpit, it blared for 7 seconds there was no comment or reaction from the crew. People near the parish of santa barbra saw the plane low over their town and it was flying much lower than what other airpalnes flew, it was headed straight for the Pico Alto mountain, the plane disappeared into the clouds, the witnesses on the ground couldn't see the plane anymore,

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