“Twenty years ago, a catastrophic accident occurred when Enterprise Flight 32, a Boeing 737-800, was involved in a mid-air collision with a De Havilland Canada DHC-8-402 at 10,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean. This terrible crash took the lives of 90 people, leaving only 9 survivors.
Now, a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot, who did an accident investigation expert for the US military, has made connections between this disaster and examined what he believed were the main errors behind this tragic incident.
In the first place, the ex-pilot contended that there were problems with the transponder of the DHC-8. The transponder is a crucial component of aircraft navigation systems that provides altitude information to air traffic control and nearby aircraft. In this case, the investigator believed that the DHC-8’s transponder was malfunctioning, which led to incorrect altitude readings. These misleading indications can cause air traffic controllers to issue incorrect clearances, which was a crucial factor in this crash.
Second, there were communication failures. As usual, there were several reasons for the communication breakdown. Some from the air traffic controllers were not experienced in handling multiple aircraft in a small area, while others had access to poor information. Moreover, there were deficiencies in the information sharing across the different teams. These communication problems allowed the aircraft to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and increased the risk of this devastating collision.
Finally, the ex-pilot mentioned that there was a lack of cross-checks among the air traffic controllers and crew of Enterprise Flight 32, which may have prevented the accident had they conducted checks.
In the resulting death of 90 people, the combination of these mistakes had fatal consequences. It is regrettable that this tragedy was causal of the need for enhanced communication between air traffic controllers and better equipment and maintenance practices. It is crucial to learn a lesson from this painful experience, so we can prevent such tragedies from happening in the future.”
