Nation: The Crash of the Night Owl

A DC-10 comes down on the wrong runway, killing 73 people

In his 30 years as a pilot with Western Air Lines, Captain Charles Gilbert, 53, had made the run between Los Angeles and Mexico City hundreds of times. The last occasion had been in late October, six days after Runway 23-L, which is the only one at Benito Juarez International Airport equipped for instrument landings, had been closed for repairs. Last week, before he took off at 12:50 a.m. from Los Angeles in command of Flight 2605, the “Night Owl,” carrying 13 crew members and 75 passengers, he was reminded that he had to land on Runway 23-R.

Three hours later, Gilbert began his descent. It was especially complicated because the approach lights on the closed Runway 23-L, which pilots usually follow to guide their planes down, had been shut off. The Mexican controllers instructed Gilbert to line up his plane over an undisclosed ground reference point. He reported that he had done so, but Controller Luis Munguia warned: “You are at the left of the track.” The pilot replied confidently, “Just a little bit.”

He was tragically wrong. The DC-10 touched down on the closed runway and headed toward a dump truck. Gilbert apparently realized his mistake and tried, too late, to lift the DC-10 back into the air. The plane smashed into the truck, veered wildly to the right, wound up slamming into an Eastern Air Lines maintenance building and burst into flames. The final death count was 73: a total of 60 passengers, eleven crew members, including Gilbert, and two people on the ground.

Fifteen passengers and two crew members survived. Passenger Dwane Canaga, a building contractor from Stockton, Calif., recalled that just before the crash, “the captain came on with the usual speech. Ten seconds later, we had this mean bump, and I said to myself, ‘That’s probably the worst landing I’ve ever had.” Then all hell broke loose.”

What caused Gilbert’s error? That will take weeks to determine. But the cockpit crew seemed fatigued; Gilbert and his aides were late in doing their final checks as they approached the runway. In addition, Benito Juarez Airport is one of 250 with a redstar rating from the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations, meaning that the airport is “severely deficient.” The only worse rating is a black star for “critically deficient,” which the IFALPA has given to 19 airports (the only one in the U.S. is Los Angeles International). Among the reasons for the Mexico City airport’s low rating are deficiencies in electronic navigational aids and landing equipment. Moreover, a standard map of the airport distributed to pilots carries this warning: “CAUTION: Street lights approximately one mile north of … Runway 23-L may be mistaken for runway lights in conditions of low visibility.” Gilbert was reading a copy of the map on the way down. And, at the time of the crash, both runways were in fact blanketed by ground fog.

The fiery crash pointed to no new mechanical deficiencies in the DC-10, which was grounded in the U.S. for 37 days after one lost an engine and crashed shortly after takeoff from Chicago on May 25, killing 273 people. But that is cold consolation indeed.