American Airlines Flight 965

Investigation

The crash was investigated by the Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics (Aeronáutica Civil) of the Republic of Colombia, with assistance from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), as well as other parties, including the US Federal Aviation Administration, Allied Pilots Association, American Airlines, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, and Rolls-Royce Engines.

The investigations revealed that neither the Boeing fixed-base simulator nor the flight management system simulator could be backdriven with the data obtained directly from the accident airplane's flight data recorder (FDR). Because the 757 flight simulators could not be backdriven during the tests, whether the airplane would have missed the mountain/tree tops if the speedbrakes had been retracted during the climb attempt could not be determined with precision, but the final report stated that if the flightcrew had retracted the speedbrakes one second after initiating the escape maneuver, the airplane could have been climbing through a position that was 150 ft above the initial impact point. Because the airplane would have continued to climb and had the potential to increase its rate of climb, it might well have cleared the trees at the top of the mountain.

The Civil Aeronautics prepared a final report of its investigation in September 1996, which was released through the US NTSB.

In its report, the Civil Aeronautics determined these probable causes of the accident:

The flight crew's failure to adequately plan and execute the approach to runway 19 at SKCL and their inadequate use of automation

Failure of the flight crew to discontinue the approach into Cali, despite numerous cues alerting them of the inadvisability of continuing the approach

The lack of situational awareness of the flight crew regarding vertical navigation, proximity to terrain, and the relative location of critical radio aids

Failure of the flight crew to revert to basic radio navigation at the time when the flight management system-assisted navigation became confusing and demanded an excessive workload in a critical phase of the flight

In addition, the Civil Aeronautics determined that these factors contributed to the accident:

The flight crew's ongoing efforts to expedite their approach and landing to avoid potential delays

The flight crew's execution of the ground proximity warning system escape maneuver while the speedbrakes remained deployed

FMS logic that dropped all intermediate fixes from the display(s) in the event of execution of a direct routing

FMS-generated navigational information that used a different naming convention from that published in navigational charts

The Civil Aeronautics'''s report also included a variety of safety-related recommendations to the involved parties (number of individual recommendations in parentheses):

International Civil Aviation Organization (3)

American Airlines (2)

Investigators later labeled the accident a nonsurvivable event, citing the impact forces and subsequent destruction of the aircraft.

Rachel L. Swarns of The New York Times reported that within the United States, after people learned of the status of the flight, "mourning was most keenly concentrated yesterday in the larger Colombian communities" in the East Coast.

Scavengers took engine thrust reversers, cockpit avionics, and other components from the crashed 757, using Colombian military and private helicopters to go to and from the crash site. Many of the stolen components reappeared as unapproved aircraft parts on the black market in Greater Miami parts brokers. In response, the airline published a 14-page list stating all of the parts missing from the crashed aircraft. The list included the serial numbers of all of the parts.

In 1997, US District Judge Stanley Marcus ruled that the pilots had committed "willful misconduct"; the ruling applied to American Airlines, which represented the dead pilots. The judge's ruling was subsequently reversed in June 1999 by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which also overturned the jury verdict and declared that the judge in the case was wrong in issuing a finding of fault with the pilots, a role which should have been reserved for the jury only.

American Airlines settled numerous lawsuits brought against it by the families of the victims of the accident. American Airlines filed a "third-party complaint" lawsuit for contribution against Jeppesen and Honeywell, which made the navigation computer database and failed to include the coordinates of Rozo under the identifier "R"; the case went to trial in United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami. At the trial, American Airlines admitted that it bore some legal responsibility for the accident. Honeywell and Jeppesen each contended that they had no legal responsibility for the accident. In June 2000, the jury found that Jeppesen was 30% at fault for the crash, Honeywell was 10% at fault, and American Airlines was 60% at fault.

An enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) that could have prevented the accident by providing earlier warning of impending terrain was introduced in 1996.

All US-registered turbine-powered aircraft capable of carrying more than six passengers built since 2002 are required to have an advanced terrain awareness and warning system.

As of July 2024, American Airlines continues to operate the Miami–Cali route, as American Airlines Flight 919 and American Airlines Flight 921, both operated by Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft.

Paris Kanellakis, a computer scientist at Brown University, died with his wife and two children.

Benny Ramírez, an insurance agent, a former professional wrestler and a former National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) Texas Heavyweight Champion and NWA International Tag Team Championship, whose wrestling career spanned from 1959 to 1983. Ramírez, along with his wife and youngest child, were passengers on the flight. He and his wife perished in the crash. Their child was one of the four survivors.

Francisco Ferré Malaussena, son of former Miami mayor Maurice A. Ferré, his wife and son all perished in the crash.

The US government encountered difficulty while trying to distinguish Americans from non-Americans, as many passengers held dual citizenships.

The events of Flight 965 were featured in "Lost", a season-two (2005) episode of the Canadian TV series Mayday (called Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the US and Air Crash Investigation in the UK and elsewhere around the world). The episode was broadcast with the title "Crash on the Mountain" in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Asia.

The accident was covered in episode Fatal turn on Youtube channel Mentour Pilot, ran by former Ryanair training and line-check captain Petter Hörnfeldt

The accident was also featured on Why Planes Crash on MSNBC, in a 2015 episode titled "Sudden Impact".

A documentary film released in 2021, American 965, directed and produced by a former British Airways captain with Fact Not Fiction Films, suggests a different possible cause for the accident.Outlook, a BBC World Service radio program, had an episode titled "The Father and Daughter Finding Closure After a Plane Crash", which consisted of interviews with two of the survivors of the crash.

The accident is featured prominently in the 2011 novel The Sound of Things Falling by Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vasquez.

In a 2022 episode of the podcast Other People's Lives, survivor Michelle Dussan is interviewed.

It was featured as one of the instances where cockpit miscommunication correlated with an accident in the HBO's TV series The Rehearsal.See also

Aloha IslandAir Flight 1712

Santa Bárbara Airlines Flight 518

Trigana Air Flight 267

Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics

Final Accident Report – AA965

Text version of final report – Prepared for the World Wide Web by Peter Ladkin of Bielefeld University (Alt, Alt #2, Archive, Archive of Alt #2 Alt Archive)

Appendices – The people who prepared them for the World Wide Web used Deskscan II to scan photocopies of them

Final Accident Report – AA965 (Archive, Alt Archive) – Translation by Captain José Bestene Mattar and Maria Isabel Bobrez Orozco

"At least four of 164 passengers survive U.S. jet crash in Colombia," CNN Zarrella, John. "Tearful relatives head to Colombia," CNN. December 22, 1995.

"More survivors pulled from wreckage of U.S. jet," CNN. December 21, 1995.

Dewar, Steuart. "Brown professor, wife, 2 children killed in crash" (Archive). Associated Press, posted at Brown University.

BBC Horizon Program interviewing Mercedes Ramirez Johnson, a survivor of AA flight 965

CNN Evening News for Friday, 22 December 1995 Headline: Colombia / American Airlines Plane Crash Vanderbilt University Television Archive

Mercedes Ramirez Johnson website

Mercer, Pamela. "Pair Who Survived a Crash Relieved to Be on Home Soil." The New York Times''. May 19, 1996.

Piamba Cortes v. American Airlines Inc. (Archive)

B757 Cali Accident in the Compendium of Computer-Related Incidents with Commercial Aircraft including a copy of the Colombian accident report.

Cockpit voice recording transcript