Pilot Refuses to Declare Emergency / Avianca Flight 52 Runs Out of Fuel
Black Box Down
00:00
Air Traffic Control Never Stressed That It Was an Emergency
The ants b also says that the captain was having issues with his radio head set, which made it hard for him to hear and to communicate. He just kind of assumed that air traffic control would know that there was an emergency, but they were unaware of the severity of the situation. The maintenance records for this plane showed that there were recent problems with the auto pilot and the flight director. And because of this, the n t s b believes that the captain had hand flown the plane from ain all the way to jf k without the aid of a flight director. So he spent hours manually flying.
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