Unsolved To This Day | Alaska Airlines Flight 1866

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This is the story of Alaska airlines flight 1866. On the fourth of september 1971 a boeing 727 was flying from ted stevens international airport to Seattle tacoma international airport. With stopovers in Merle K airport in Alaska, Yakutat airport, Juneau and sitka airports. On the ground at Yakutat the air traffic controller cleared the plane to Juneau. The crew had to take jet route 507 to the pleasant intersection and then they could fly direct to juneau. At 11:35 am the plane lifted off from yakutat with 107 people and 7 crew members on board.

At 11:46 pm the crew were 65 Nm east of yakutat and they were at 23000 feet, the controller cleared the plane down to 10000 feet but the pilots had to descend at their own discretion and they had to cross the pleasant intersection at 10,000 feet. At 11:51 pm flight 1866 started its descent down from 23000 feet. As they descended the controller asked them to maintain 12,00 feet.But the controller wasn't all there, he was a bit preoccupied. In the skies above alaska that day was a piper apache that was not following its clearance and the controller was also trying to get the apache back on course.

At 11:58 am the plane was at the pleasant intersection this is where they had been cleared to and they, entered a holding pattern, the controller immediately cleared them to the Howard intersection. Controller enquired about the plane's altitude and the pilot let the controller know that they were at 12000 feet and that they were on instruments. The plane was right where the controller wanted them.
They were cleared to the howard intersection but they would have to hold there as well as they hadn't gotten clearance to proceed beyond the howard intersection point. At 12:01 pm still in the clouds flight 1866 reached the Howard intersection point and they started flying the holding pattern. 6 minutes later the controller checks in with the crew of flight 1866 about their position in the holding pattern so that the controller could clear them to the airport with the appropriate guidance. The pilots told the controller that they had just finished their inbound turn and that they were now heading towards the Howard waypoint on the localizer. So the pilots at this point was somewhere along this line, heading towards the howard waypoint. For the controller this is perfect. He cleared the plane in for a straight in LDA approach and he aksed the crew to cross the howard waypoint at or below 9000 feet. The pilot acknowledges this clearance and let them know that the plane was now leaving 12000 feet. The approach controller controller kept checking in with flight 1866 about their altitude, when they were at about, 4500 feet the approach controller handed the plane off to the juneau tower. The captain keyed his mic “Alaska 66 Earlow inbound”, they were now at the earlow waypoint which was 10nm west of the airport. The tower controller replied with ""Alaska 66, understand, ah, I didn't, ah, co~y the inter- gusts to 28, the altimeter now 29.47, time is 09 112. call section, landing Runway 8, the wind 0800 at 22 occasional us by Barlow.ll barolo was a point very close to the runway and from where they were they should have reached barlow very quickly, but that confirmation never came, the seconds ticked by and at 12:23 Pm emergency services were put into service to find the missing plane. A few hours later the wreck of the 727 was found on the chilkat mountain range 18.5 NM west of the airport. No one unfortunately survived

Before we go any further lets just take a look at how this boeing 727 ended up where it did, the plane approached the airport and the howard waypoint from the west, it went into a holding

Видео Unsolved To This Day | Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 канала Mini Air Crash Investigation