On December 1, 1993, a commuter flight approaching a rural airport in northern Minnesota crashed into a hilltop short of the runway, tragically killing all 18 passengers and crew members on board. This flight was Northwest Airlink Flight 5719, traveling from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport to International Falls Airport in International Falls, Minnesota, with a scheduled stop at Chisholm-Hibbing Airport in Hibbing, Minnesota.
The investigation that followed revealed a combination of factors, including a too-rapid descent, poor communication in the cockpit, and a failure to monitor altitude. But the most disturbing element was the captain’s personal life, which painted a picture of a man with a personality incompatible with safety.
One thing was clear: the crash of Northwest Airlink flight 5719 did not begin with the crew’s procedural errors, but with a complex set of interpersonal relationships that far predated the fatal flight.
Background
Hibbing, Minnesota, located in the Iron Range, is known for its iron mine and as the birthplace of Bob Dylan and Greyhound Bus Lines. The town also hosts Range Regional Airport, connecting it to metropolitan areas. In the 1990s, Northwest Airlink, operated by Express II, was the sole airline serving Range Regional Airport, providing flights to various towns in the north-central United States.
Flight 5719 was one of Express II’s scheduled flights from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport to Range Regional Airport in Hibbing. The aircraft was a British Aerospace Jetstream 3100, capable of carrying up to 19 passengers. On board were 17 passengers and two pilots: 42-year-old Captain Marvin Falitz and 25-year-old First Officer Chad Erickson.
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At the time of this flight, Erickson had 65 hours experience flying this type of aircraft. In contrast to his young, cheerful, First Officer, Captain Falitz was not having a good day. He was working as a reserve captain, which meant he could be called up unexpectedly to conduct flights that needed a last minute addition to the crew, and this was one such trip.
That wasn’t his only bad experience that day. Earlier on the 1st, he had to “deadhead” - ride as a non-paying passenger - to International Falls. When he tried to board the plane, he found that his authorization from Express II to ride as a passenger hadn’t come through. He was so annoyed by the schedule change that he filled out an Air Line Pilots Association grievance form, which he left behind in his room, where he presumably planned to sign and postmark it when he returned.
Events Leading to the Crash
Later that evening, Falitz arrived in Minneapolis to command flight 5719 to Hibbing, whereupon he and First Officer Chad Erickson set about preparing the plane for departure. While a bewildered ramp agent looked on, Falitz berated Erickson for failing to perform the pre-flight inspections correctly, resulting in his failure to discover that the landing lights weren’t working. The flight had to be delayed while mechanics swapped out the bulbs.
The wind that night favored the southeast-pointing runway 13. That would present a little bit of extra difficulty, because runway 13 did not have an instrument landing system (ILS), which would make it easier to land amid the low clouds that blanketed the region. Only runway 31 - the same runway in the opposite direction - had such a system. In order to land into the wind while still taking partial advantage of the ILS, Captain Falitz elected to perform a difficult non-precision back course approach to runway 13.
All of these factors came together to make this particular approach to Hibbing extremely stressful for the flight crew. Flight 5719 took off over 40 minutes late from Minneapolis-St. Paul. This was due to a late arrival and the replacement of landing light bulbs in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Until moments before the crash, Flight 5719 was uneventful and no emergency was declared.
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At 7:36, Captain Falitz instructed First Officer Erickson to contact the Express II operational base in Hibbing to report their imminent arrival.
Around 7:40, Captain Falitz decided to change their approach plan because other pilots landing at the airport had reported that they experienced light to moderate ice accumulation while descending through the cloud layer below 8,000 feet. Because ice poses a significant danger to airplanes, especially small ones like the Jetstream 3100, Captain Falitz decided that he was going to try to spend as little time as possible inside the cloud layer where ice could form. To accomplish this, he planned to remain above 8,000 feet for as long as possible before descending very rapidly through the area of icing conditions.
Did This Pilot Crash Flight 5719 Out of Anger?
Instead of telling Erickson about the change of plans, he just kept flying at 8,000 past the point they had earlier agreed to descend. Noticing that Falitz was staying at 8,000 feet, Erickson asked, “You gonna stay up here as long as you can?”
Instead of descending to an intermediate altitude as described in the procedure, Falitz kept them high almost all the way through the DME arc, then pitched down and entered a descent of 2,250 feet per minute, more than twice the maximum prescribed by both company rules and federal regulations. First Officer Erickson was obligated to call out any descent rate greater than 1,000 feet per minute, but he said nothing.
Moments later, Erickson called out “one to go,” meaning they were 1,000 feet above their last step height before landing. If they were too far from the airport upon reaching the step height of 2,040 feet, they would need to level off.
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Seconds later, without warning, the right wing of the Jetstream 3100 struck a pine atop a ridge in a disused mine, slicing off the tips of both the wing and the tree. The pilots were caught so completely by surprise that they never uttered so much as a scream.
The Crash
By 7:55, flight 5719 should have landed, and as Express II ground handlers waited without any sign of the plane, the ops center began to fear the worst. Approximately one hour later, first responders located the wreckage atop a ridge 5.4km short of runway 13. They arrived to a gruesome scene: bodies had been ejected from the plane, surrounded by Christmas gifts torn from the passengers’ bags, and the snow was stained red with blood. It was obvious that there were no survivors.
The aircraft continued its descent through the 2,040-foot (620 m) step-down altitude. It struck the top of a tree, continued for 634 feet (193 m), and struck a group of aspen trees.
Investigation and Findings
Although the small commuter plane didn’t have a flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder in combination with the radar track revealed the basic sequence of events. The precipitating error was the failure of the captain to reduce the rate of descent in a timely manner, causing the aircraft to descend through the minimum descent altitude (MDA), the lowest height above terrain allowed in that area.
Tragically, the plane was not equipped with a ground proximity warning system (GPWS), unlike larger aircraft, which had been required to have them since 1975. Had the accident aircraft been equipped with a GPWS, it would have sounded a loud “PULL UP” alarm approximately 21 seconds before impact, and the crash almost certainly would not have occurred. Ground proximity warning systems had already been made mandatory for aircraft in the 10-19 seat range with a deadline in April 1994, but with the deadline a little less than five months away, Express II still hadn’t installed the system on its fleet of Jetstream 3100s.
On any aircraft, especially one without a GPWS, it is critical that the crew maintains altitude awareness at all times. Much of this task falls to the pilot not flying - in this case, the first officer - who must monitor altitude and descent rate and make callouts at certain thresholds throughout the approach. Proper procedure called for him to announce any sink rate greater than 1,000 feet per minute; 1,000 feet and 300 feet above any assigned altitude; 500 and 100 feet above the MDA, as indicated on their approach charts; and the attainment of any assigned altitude or the MDA. Remarkably, First Officer Erickson made only one of these required callouts in the minutes before the crash.
The concluding statement from the NTSB report (NTSB/AAR-94/05) provided the following probable cause for the crash of Northwest Airlink Flight 5719: "The captain's actions led to a breakdown in crew coordination and the loss of altitude awareness by the flight crew during an unstabilized approach in night instrument meteorological conditions.
Falitz was said to have a reputation for following company procedures and being meticulous with flight check lists, but three first officers accused him of being deliberately rough on the flight controls.
Passengers
Among their 16 passengers were three Californians--Rochelle Thacker, 47, of Santa Ana, Tony Trujillo, 11, of Palmdale, and Theresa Hettinga, 59, of Modesto.
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