American Airlines Flight 1420 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Little Rock National Airport in the United States. On Tuesday, June 1st, 1999, the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 operating as Flight 1420 overran the runway upon landing in Little Rock and crashed. 9 of the 145 people aboard were immediately killed—the captain and eight passengers—and 2 more passengers died in the hospital in the following weeks.

Aircraft

thumb|Seating chart for American Airlines Flight 1420 created by the [[NTSB, revealing the location of passengers and lack of injury, severity of injuries, and deaths]]

The aircraft involved in the incident was a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 (registration ), a derivative of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9, and part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series of aircraft.

The flight's first officer was Michael Origel, age 35. Another two passengers died in the hospital in the weeks that followed. First Officer Origel, three of the four flight attendants, and 41 passengers sustained serious injuries, the remaining flight attendant and 64 passengers sustained minor injuries, and 24 passengers sustained no injuries.

Pilot behavior regarding thunderstorms

The NTSB investigation also focused on pilot behavior in inclement weather, to determine the impact the storms may have had on the pilots' decision-making process while approaching Little Rock National Airport.

Experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology performed a study that recorded the behavior of pilots landing at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport,

Fatigue

The NTSB report cited fatigue as a contributing factor. The captain had been awake for 16 hours that day;

The compensatory damages claims proceeded first. American Airlines "admitted liability for the crash, and individual trials were scheduled to assess the proper amount of compensatory damages. Thereafter, American Airlines reached settlement agreements with a majority of the domestic Plaintiffs."

As part of the settlement agreement, "Plaintiffs relinquished not only their compensatory damages claims, but their punitive damages claims, as well."

In the only liability trial arising out of the crash of Flight 1420, a federal jury in Little Rock awarded Captain Buschmann's family $2 million in wrongful-death damages following a lawsuit they had filed against Little Rock National Airport. The jury rejected the airport's argument that Buschmann was at fault in causing his own death.

The jury verdict has been claimed to completely absolve Buschmann of all fault for the crash,

American Airlines still flies to Little Rock from Dallas/Fort Worth, but the aircraft used is usually an Embraer E175. The route is operated by Envoy Air, an entirely owned subsidiary of the American Airlines Group.

Every year from 2000 to 2022, the father of crash victim Debra Taylor-Sattari elaborately decorated the exterior of his home in Vallejo, California with Christmas lights and decorations in her honor, which gained attention from local and national media.

  • The events of Flight 1420 were featured in "Racing the Storm", a season one (2003) episode of the Canadian TV series Mayday which looked at the role of bad weather in multiple aviation disasters.
  • The Weather Channel detailed the story of the flight on an episode of Storm Stories, as did the Biography Channel on the show Flightmares.

References

  • Weather satellite imagery (Archive)
  • Essay by Survivor Sharon Angleman
  • Graphic showing what happened during the last seconds of the crash
  • Transcript of cockpit voice recorder
  • Story on the crash from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
  • Graphics showing weather radar from around the time of the crash
  • Pre-crash photos of N215AA
  • Photo of the crashed aircraft
  • Passenger manifest of AA1420 (Archive)
  • Dutch explanation of Crosswind Certification (; Archive)
  • Racing the Storm (Air Crash Investigation)