30th anniversary of Air Florida 14th Street Bridge crash

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Air Florida crash in Washington, D.C.

In that historically significant accident, Air Florida Flight 90 struggled to lift off after departing from National Airport in snowy and icy conditions. The plane hit Washington's 14th Street Bridge shortly after takeoff and then crashed and sank in the icy Potomac River.

The crash killed 78 people – 74 crew and passengers from the flight as well as four people who had been in their cars on the bridge. Five survived the crash, and their dramatic rescue was captured live by a TV crew that had been stuck in rush-hour traffic near the bridge. Rush-hour traffic began early that day and was unusually heavy following the federal government's decision to release workers early because of the snow.

The tragedy left lasting legacies on two fronts.

The breaking live-from-the-scene TV reports were – perhaps – a hint of how news would increasingly be delivered to viewers in the modern era.

But, more important, many industry experts say the crash spurred the adoption of new safety protocols that have dramatically enhanced aviation safety....

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Remembering the Air Florida crash, 30 years later - USATODAY.com

I hate that I remember stuff from 30 years ago. I can still see the man jumping in the water to attempt a rescue. If I remember correctly he lost his legs from the freezing water. Could be wrong though.

It is sad that that happened. I had decided at that point that I would never fly in the winter. And I have not. Too dang risky in spite of all the things that were corrected since then. I hate to fly, I'm serious. Here's why; when you fly, you are putting your safety in the hands of hundreds of people. All you need is ONE thing to be out of place. Something gets turned off, or the mechanic, up on the engine scaffold, realizes that he's forgotten the proper torque wrench or some tool needed to do the job right, goes to ground to get it, gets distracted, and forgets that he was supposed to get that wrench, goes back up, sees the bolt on (but it is not torqued sufficiently to stay on), and proceeds to the next step, or something like that. However, Flight 90 was an absolute clusterf*. A complete one. Let's look at what happened.

It was four groups of people who got all those people killed.

The pilots themselves (the Captain was ultimately at fault, but look at how everything else fell together to allow this pilot to be flying AT ALL. However, the second-in-command knew that something was wrong.

The company itself for allowing such a compromised crew to fly at all. The captain had been caught twice in a company line check, the first time to make sure that he was following rules on regulations, checks, etc. He passed the check 3 months later! A few months later, he was caught with deficiencies related to actually flying the thing such as anti-icing, using reserve thrust while parked to get moving, and standing in line too close to the plane ahead (all of which happened on this flight). Besides, these pilots did not have sufficient experience to fly in snow conditions. They should not have paired such a Captain with a co-pilot who admitted to limitations in stressful flight conditions. The company rightfully went out of business for this reason.

Number three was the airport itself, because they had reopened JUST as snowfall started to decline. Without knowing it, they had allowed a compromised flight crew to fly in conditions it was not properly trained for. The bad thing is, there was no way of knowing that this crew was going to be the one to pay the ultimate of all pipers; Death. It's true that none of the other planes crashed that day or even for some time after that, and the fault was the Captain (since other pilots at Air Florida did not end up in death like this), but still, to just say, "What the hey, go fly, good luck, don't get killed." That is such a cavalier treatment of life... I'm sure people in the industry would disagree with me, but who cares. It is I, the potential passenger, who sees it that way. Perception is everything.

The last group I can think of was the ground crew for not following deicing procedures (differing deicing solution proportions and the wrong spray nozzle installed), opening coverage procedures (to keep ice out), and not knowing how to tug an aircraft out of position, which ultimately led to the amount of ice built up over an extended period as the plane waited for another properly equipped tug and having to wait even longer in line to get airborne.

Yes, things are much tighter communications-wise, procedures-wise, and regulations-wise, leading to an unprecedented safety record in the airline industry, but all it takes, is one person to get one thing wrong, and that's it. This is out of hundreds, if not thousands of people who are supposed to work together to make sure you arrive at your destination. Otherwise, "Insert quarter" for another game (life on earth as a human). We're talking strictly human error here. We haven't even touched malfunctions that occur in spite of regularly scheduled maintenance and safety checks. What is sad is that none of the passengers had any idea this was going on. Even if they did, they probably couldn't do anything about it. Everything came together wrong for these people. What a bad, fatal day it was for these people. My hope is that the Captain had to answer to 78 people dead, including the copilot (for not listening to him in the first place).

Realizing this is what has kept me out of the air. I realize that I'm taking a chance every time I fly. I last flew before 9-11 (August of 2000), and I'm sure things are a LOT different now.

EDIT: I just realized something. Four of the survivors are still alive, which means the Captain is not done yet; I believe that he must apologize to them as well, as well as younger family members and other people connected to the dead people as they finally die in the future. He's going to be apologizing for a long time...