The Petty Captain That Killed 148 People | Iberia Airlines 610

This is the story of iberia flight 610. Flying a passenger jet is hard, sure automation has made it so that its easier than what it used to be in the 70s and 80s but if you think about it youre now in control of an immensely complex metal tube that needs to be controlled with pin point accuracy. Oh and you have to do it in all sorts of weather, good and bad. On the 19th of february 1985 an iberain airlines 727 was making the flight from madrid to bilbao . The climbout was normal, the first officer was chatting away with the flight engineer and their conversation was interrupted here and there by the odd bit of radio chatter or the autopilot letting the pilots know that they were 900 feet away from their target altitude.The short flight was uneventful and the pilots did not have an issue in getting the plane most of the way to bilbao. The weather was not the best as they had some low lying fog and some starto cumulus clouds at 4000 feet. Nothing that these pilots couldnt handle. the pilots got in touch with the controllers, the controllers were going to set the plane up for an ILS approach to runway 30 at bilbao . the plane dropped down to 10,000 feet. As the jet dropped the controller gave the pilots the option of taking a shortcut to get to the final approach fix of the runway. It wasnt a busy day and this small detour would save the pilots some time but the pilots opted for the standard full fat approach as thats the one that they had prepped for. Changing the approach this late might cause some planning issues. As the jet crossed 30000 feet the pilots are working on making sure that the plane is configured for landing. At this point if you were in the cabin you would have heard the engines being pulled back to slow the plane down for the approach. The sounds of the engines fading away would then be replaced with a slow rumble which was the flaps being extended. At 8:22 am the plane overflew the Bilbao VOR and they started on the path to get down to the runway. The next hop down was to get the plane down to 5000 feet. The ride was a bit bumpy; the plane then levels off at 5000 feet. The next level would be to get down to 4300 feet. Then the plane would level off and then capture the ILS. At this point the plane started a bank to the left and then they needed to make a right turn. Then they needed to bring the flaps to 5 degrees. As they were doing this the plane was being flown on this relatively complex sharp right turn that would set the plane up for a landing on runway 30, ill have a screenshot with the approach map on the screen right now. This is usually fine but today the fog made it hard. Then the pilots realised that they had accidentally descended below their target altitude, one of the pilots exclaimed “my god”, he had just seen a an antenna sticking out of the top of a mountain. the plane slams into an antenna and the left wing of the jet is ripped clean off the plane that was out of control, then crashed into the pine covered mountain that was in front of it. None of the 148 people made it. How did a passenger jet end up slamming into an antenna on a mountain side? To find this they needed to look at the descent from 5000 feet. To make this approach work they needed to level off at 4400 feet. The minimum clearance for this area was 4354 feet. So if they leveled off at 4400 feet then they would have a couple of feet of margin built in. But in this case they went well below that limit. The first clue came from a little ding in the cockpit, this was from the altitude alert system and this is how it works on the boeing 727, you see when the aircraft is heading to the selected altitude and its within 900 feet of that selected altitude you get a little auditory warning and a light turns on in the cockpit. When you deviate more than 300 feet from your selected altitude then this warning or alert turns off. This is just to add to your situational awareness.