Investigation and Final Report
Following the crash, the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder was recovered from the wreckage and the data recorded found to be intact and usable. Under Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 135 Air Taxi rules, no flight data recorder was required for this type of flight and one had not been installed.
Part of the subsequent NTSB investigation focused on the fact that the instrument approach at the destination airport was not legal for night landing, and the overall pressure applied on the charter company and flight crew by the charter customer to complete the flight into the original destination. According to witnesses, the charter customer, upon learning that the flight might have to be diverted to an alternate airport due to the night landing restriction, had his business assistant call Avjet management, to "let them know that the airplane was not going to be redirected".
In addition, witnesses claimed that when the charter customer learned that the captain had discussed the possible diversion with some of the passengers waiting for the late arrivals, he had his assistant call Avjet to instruct the captain to "keep his comments to himself."
The Avjet charter department scheduler subsequently testified that "the captain felt that it was important to land at because of the substantial amount of money that the customer spent for a dinner party."
Based on information obtained from the cockpit voice recorder, the flight attendant had escorted an unidentified male passenger to the flight deck's jump seat during the approach sequence. According to the NTSB's analysis, "the presence of this passenger in the cockpit, especially if it were the charter customer, most likely further heightened the pressure on the flight crew to land at ."
The NTSB issued its final report on June 11, 2002, with the following Probable Cause:
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the flight crew's operation of the airplane below the minimum descent altitude without an appropriate visual reference for the runway.
The NTSB added the following Contributing Factors:
Contributing to the cause of the accident were the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) unclear wording of the March 27, 2001 Notice to Airmen regarding the nighttime restriction for the VOR/DME-C approach to the airport and the FAA's failure to communicate this restriction to the Aspen tower; the inability of the flight crew to adequately see the mountainous terrain because of the darkness and the weather conditions; and the pressure on the captain to land from the charter customer and because of the airplane's delayed departure and the airport's nighttime landing restriction.
Read more about this topic: 2001 Avjet Aspen Crash
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