Ignoring The One Man That Can Save You | The Crash Of Alitalia Flight 404

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This is the story of Alitalia flight 404. On the 14th of november 1990 Flight 404 was a flight from Linate airport in Milan to Zurich. They were flying a DC-9 and they had 40 passengers and 6 crew members on board. At 6:36 pm alitalia flight 404 took off from runway 36R from linate bound for Zurich with the first officer at the controls. The Dc 9 left Italy behind and climbed to its cruising altitude of 20000 feet. As they reached their cruising altitude they listened to the automated weather broadcasts from Zurich.

The surface wind at Zurich was at 240 degrees and 8 knots. The pilots discussed among themselves about the best possible runway for a landing. The first officer is of the opinion that a landing on runway 28 would be best given the current wind conditions but the active runway right now is runway 14. But they still discuss a left hand circling approach to land on runway 28.

As they descended they talked about the approach procedure for runway 14, they also talked about what they should do in the event of a communications failure or a go around. The crew were given radar vectors to perform an ILS approach onto runway 14. At 7 pm the copilot says “We perform a CAT II(approach)". As all of this happened they descended through 9000 feet and passed abeam of the zurich airport they were to the south west of the airport. The captain noted, "We are by KLOTEN, FL 90. He is bringing us in high", From the radar plots in the report that puts them approximately here.

So lets see the approach that they were trying to execute. From the point that they were at they'd fly to EKRON or near it and then turn right to a heading of 070 degrees.theyd maintain 070 degrees till they reached D-10, then they'd turn right to the runway heading all the while maintaining 4000 feet till they intercepted the glideslope at DME 8. From then its just a matter of following the ILS glideslope to the foot of the runway and then landing on runway 14. Now that we know what they were planning to do lets get back to the cockpit to see how they executed this approach.

After the captain commented that they were abeam of zurich airport they were cleared to descend to 6000 feet and they were asked to fly 325 degrees. With a heading of 325 they'd arrive at or near ekron. Once near EKRON they set the heading to 068 which took the plane in a right turn and they were following the approach chart correctly up to this point. At 7:05 pm they identified ILS runway 14. At 7:06 pm they got the approach clearance to the ILS runway 14. As we talked about before now they had to maintain 4000 feet and intercept the extended centerline of the runway. To do this they were given a heading of 110 and 4000 feet. This took the plane in another right turn. But the captain read the heading back as 120 degrees this caused a bit of confusion for the first officer. Should he fly 110 or 120? The first officer selected 110 degrees and They flew on.

Soon afterward the copilot said “Radio approach”. They were about to intercept the localizer and they were about to make their final course correction to line up with the runway. The copilot set radio1 as the receiver for this landing. At this point they had made their final turn to line up with the runway but they were slightly east of the localizer. That's the little curve that you see here on

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