The Arrogant Captain That Crashed A Passenger Jet | Alaska Airlines Flt 60

This is the story of Alaska airlines flight 60. On the 6th of april 1976 a boeing 727 was making the trip from Juneau alaska to seattle washington. On the way they had to make a quick stop at ketchikan airport. This would be considered part of the alaskan milk run. For the uninitiated a large portion of alaskas communities are still disconnected from the wider world as we know it sometimes they dont even have road connections and so the only way to get supplies in would be to fly them in. So you have these routes where you have plane that stop every so often to drop off supplies, people and to pick up mail. You know what im going to let alaska airlines explain this to you, quote “In some ways, the Milk Run flights reflect the airline’s heritage in the state where it earned its name, and the resilient bush pilots in the 1930s who transported mail, medicine and furs to all kinds of places through most kinds of weather. These days, it helps that Alaska Airlines pioneered Required Navigation Performance procedures that allow for reliable service to some of the most weather-socked and terrain-challenged airports in Alaska.
That reliability makes a difference if you’re waiting for supplies or heading to a hospital to have a baby” end quote that is what these flights are to alaskan communities, they are not just flights, they might be the link to the outside world.
It was this mission that flight 60 started its descent into ketchikan on that fateful day. The plane was at 30 DME from the airport and the pilots were just out of 10000 feet. The pilots would have a challenging landing on their hands the weather was bad. 800foot cloud ceiling, 2 miles of visibility light snow, fog, a light wind from 330 degrees. Ketchikan was a challenging airport to land at on the best of days, with it being nestled between two mountains, but this would make it so much worse. Making matters worse ketchikan wasnt a forgiving airport as there was a large ravine right after the end of runway 11. So you had to bring your A game to ketchikan. The crew would be shooting an ILS approach to runway 11 and as they lined up with runway 11 they started to make visual contact with the water and the land. As they flew towards the airport the pilots sighted guard island, this tiny island that was on the approach path for runway 11. The captain upon seeing the island decides to abandon the ILS approach and shoot an ILS approach. At a 1000 feet off of the water the captain felt like he had a quote visual glide slope of my own end quote and said that his eyes were the most reliable thing he had. So he went for the visual approach. As the jet cut through the snow and fog the the runway lights soon came into view and soon thereafter the airport was visible. He took the plane in and the main bogeys touched down on the wet runway. As the plane settled on the runway the captain extended the spoilers engaged the reverse thrust and started braking to bring the plane to a stop.But he was in for a rude awakening, the brakes werent braking as much as hed hoped, the snow and rain was making it hard for the plane to stop. So he decided against the landing and decided to go around. He stowed the spoilers called for 25 flaps and pushed the engines to takeoff power. But to everyone's shock the reversers didnt dis engage. If you don't know a thrust reverser redirects airflow from the engine into the direction of travel to slow a plane down. Ergo the name thrust reverser. If the reversers wouldnt disengage then the go around was a no go theres no way this plane would be able to takeoff much less fly. So faced with no other option than to stop and so he commanded full reverse thrust again and then moved the throttles to idle and then to the reverse detent, he reextended the spoilers in a desperate attempt to bleed off the speed that they still had.but the captain realized that they did not have enough runway to stop. He turned the plane to the right and raised the nose. He was able to clear a service road and a gully but then the plane fell into the ravine. The plane came to rest 700 feet from the runway in a valley that was about 40 feet lower than the runway.the fuselage broke into three sections, one break was near the wings leading edge and the other was near the wings trailing edge. These breaks were a perfect entry point for the fire that had started . The fire trucks found it hard to even get to the plane itself and making matters worse the firefighters