Alitalia Flight 404

The machine had an accident in August 1990 in Paris

Alitalia Flight 404 was a scheduled flight Alitalia from Milan to Zurich. The machine type McDonnell Douglas DC 9-32 crashed on 14 November 1990 during the landing approach to Zurich airport. All 46 people on board were killed.

Aircraft

The DC-9 was at the time of the accident about 16 years old and had graduated from 33'886 flight hours.

The course of the accident

The ILS cross pointer instrument pilot was broken and showed, even though the machine was 300 meters too deep, throughout the final approach to RWY 14 of Zurich airport a centered slope indicator system, which means the ideal approach path. The ILS instrument copilot worked correctly and showed the approach to deep. However, the captain decided to fatally - without sufficient error analysis - to ignore the correct -supplying device. One of the co-pilot initiated shortly before the crash go-around was aborted instruction of the captain. So it finally came south of Weiach area SURGEN point of impact on the Stadler mountain ( 637 m ), with all 40 passengers and six crew members were killed.

Follow

The chain of unfortunate circumstances led to recommendations of the Air Accident Investigation Commission. Among other things, improved procedural rules between the two pilots were introduced in the approach and offered advice on ways of misreading of the altimeter. Above all, however, the operating rules were amended to state that initiated a go-around should not be canceled.