Aspen Accident

I remember reading or hearing about this accident before and it is a shame how many aircraft consistently become victims to the airport. Knowing that it is an airport surrounded by high terrain, I, as a pilot, would be more alert on flying the procedures especially in IMC. Anytime I hear about an accident such as this, I am deeply sadden more for the passengers than the crew because passengers put their trust on the crew and have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into. This is another one of those human factor accidents and it shows how important it is to stick with training procedures, listen and look out for unusual feelings because they are an indication that something is likely to go wrong.

The contributing factors to this accident as stated in the report are the captain’s pressure to satisfy the client’s request, bad weather, but mostly poor decision making even after several warnings that an alternate is the better bet. The crew has the hours to prove competency, have been under pressure before and flown in bad weather many times, but Aspen is not the place to make mistakes upon mistakes.

The error chain started well before the accident. The flight did not depart on time and so the crew took off anyway, only to spare 12 minutes before the landing curfew. The error chain would break if the crew diverted to the alternate instead of attempting to fly the approach into Aspen even after they’ve already gone past 30 mins past sunset. Instead, the error chain continued into the approach phase. The crew followed a Challenger who went missed and that should strike a bell, but the crew was determined to land. It wasn’t just that one Challenger that went missed, there were two more that went missed and the crew expressed concerns yet wasn’t concerned enough to discontinue the approach. Into the approach phase, the crew didn’t have the runway in sight but reported that they do in hopes of seeing the runway. At that point, everything they did went steeper downhill. They didn’t listen to the GPWS and crashed short of the runway. They still could have broken the error chain at that point by stopping the descent, but they had too much going on to think straight. Rifle, the alternate airport they chose, never crossed their mind throughout the flight.

It is important that you treat your passengers with respect but when they don’t understand safety and rules, they need to be educated even if it offends them. When they understand that their lives could be on the line, like your job is, they too might understand better where you are coming from. Explain that even if there is another pilot to do the job, he will do the same and put safety and rules first. If he doesn’t, there is a great chance that passenger lives are on the tip of a mountain. Passengers shouldn’t be controlling your professionalism and in this specific accident, I would have landed at the alternate and receive derogatory remarks from my passengers rather than break the rules and be left in a risky situation.