Accident Overview
On a night flight from New York-JFK to Miami-Intl Airport under good weather conditions, the crew began an approach. The captain instructed "gear down," but all three green landing gear position lights failed to illuminate properly. The second officer entered the forward electronics bay to resolve the issue but was unsuccessful.
Sequence of Events
The crew informed air traffic control of the situation and was cleared to climb to 2,000 feet. While discussing solutions, they failed to notice the aircraft was continuing to descend. An aural warning sounded indicating a deviation of +/-250 feet from the selected altitude, but none of the crew members reacted. At 2341 local time, ATC instructed the crew to turn to a heading of 180. A minute later, the first officer realized something was wrong with the altitude. Seven seconds later, while turning with a left bank of 28°, the left engine struck the ground, and the aircraft crashed in the Everglades National Park, approximately 20 miles short of the runway threshold, disintegrating on impact. 77 people were rescued; 99 others were killed, including five crew members. More than a week later, two additional survivors died from their injuries.
Investigation Findings
Investigators found no failure or malfunction of the structure, powerplants, systems, or components before impact, except that both bulbs in the nose landing gear position indicating system were burned out. The aircraft struck the ground in a 28° left bank with a high rate of sink. There was no fire until the left wing fuel tanks were breached after impact. The captain had a tumor in his cranial cavity, but it did not contribute to the accident. The autopilot was used in basic control wheel steering (CWS) mode, and the flight crew was unaware of the low force gradient input required to change aircraft attitude in CWS. The company training program met FAA requirements. The three flight crew members were preoccupied with determining the nose landing gear position. The second officer, later joined by the jump seat occupant, went into the forward electronics bay to visually check the nose gear down position indices but could not determine the gear position. The flight crew did not hear the aural altitude alert that sounded as the aircraft descended through 1,750 feet msl. There were several manual thrust reductions during the final descent, and the speed control system did not affect those reductions. The flight crew did not monitor the flight instruments during the final descent until seconds before impact, and the captain failed to ensure a pilot was monitoring the aircraft's progress at all times.
Probable Cause
The probable cause of the accident was the failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instruments during the final 4 minutes of flight and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed.