Eastern Air Lines Flight 212

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**Eastern Air Lines Flight 212**
Summary
Date	September 11, 1974
Type	Pilot Error
Site	Charlotte, North Carolina
Fatalities	72
Injuries	10
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas DC-9-31
Operator	Eastern Air Lines
Tail number	N8984E
Passengers	78
Crew	4
Survivors	10

Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 was an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-9-31, carrying 78 passengers and 4 crew, operating as a scheduled flight from Charleston, South Carolina to Chicago, Illinois, with an intermediate stop in Charlotte, North Carolina. On the morning of September 11, 1974, while conducting an instrument approach in dense ground fog into Douglas Municipal Airport (now called Charlotte/Douglas International Airport), Charlotte, North Carolina, the aircraft crashed just short of the runway, killing 71 of the occupants. One of the 11 initial survivors died of injuries 29 days after the accident. The aircraft was destroyed by the impact and resulting post-crash fire.^[1]

The accident was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which released its final report^[2] on May 23, 1975. In its report, the NTSB concluded that "the probable cause of the accident was the flightcrew's lack of altitude awareness at critical points during the approach due to poor cockpit discipline in that the crew did not follow prescribed procedures."

1 Crash investigation and recommendations
2 Notes
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Crash investigation and recommendations

While investigating this accident, and reviewing the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), the NTSB found that the flight crew engaged in unnecessary and "impertinent" conversation during the approach phase of the flight, discussing subjects "ranging from politics to used cars".^[2] The NTSB concluded that conducting such non-essential chatter can distract pilots from their flying duties during the critical phases of flight, such as instrument approach to landing, and recommended that the FAA promulgate rules and educate pilots to focus exclusively on flying tasks while operating at low altitudes. The FAA, after more than 6 years of consideration, finally published the Sterile Cockpit Rule in 1981.^[3]^[4]

Another possible cause of the crash discussed by the NTSB in its review of the CVR was that the crew was apparently trying to visually locate the Charlotte airport, while executing an instrument approach in the presence of low-lying fog. In addition, a persistent attempt to visually identify the nearby Carowinds amusement park observation tower,^[5]^[6] known as "Carowinds Tower" to pilots, rising to 1,314 feet MSL (340 feet AGL), may have further distracted and confused the flight crew. None of the required altitude callouts were made by the captain, which compounded the flight crew's near total lack of altitude awareness.

During the investigation the issue of the flammability of passengers' clothing materials came up. There was evidence that passengers who wore double-knit manmade fiber clothing articles sustained significantly worse burn injuries during the post-crash fire than passengers who wore articles made from natural fibers.^[2]

[edit] Notes

American comedian Stephen Colbert's father James and his two brothers Paul and Peter, were killed in this crash. Colbert was 10 years old at the time.