George Jehn New York - Final Destination: Disaster: What Really Happened to Eastern Airlines

Legal Disclaimer: Note: In this book the author is referring only to events surrounding the airline company then known as Eastern Airlines that ceased operating in 1991. In no way does the information herein reflect, in any way or in any manner, upon any new airline or other entity, which may start up at some time in the future with the same name and utilize the same or similar advertising or trademarks as the airline that ceased operations in 1991.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available through the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-9894529-6-0

Copyright 2014 by George Jehn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

Cover design by Michael Short

Author photo courtesy of John H. Taylor

Color Photography by Allen Gerber

Interior layout by Gary A. Rosenberg www.thebookcouple.com

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

eISBN: 9780990439608

To the many thousands

of former Eastern employees

who never knew the complexity

of events surrounding them,

but who paid dearly.

PROLOGUE

O n January 1, 1985, at approximately 8:38 p.m., an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 Flight 980 piloted by Captain Larry Campbell on a routine flight from Asuncion, Paraguay, to La Paz, Bolivia, crashed into the Andes Mountains outside the La Paz, Bolivia John F. Kennedy International Airport. All twenty-nine souls on board were killed.

Normally, following any airliner crash, an extensive probe to determine the cause would be undertaken by the investigative agencies of the countries involvedin this case, the United States and Boliviaas well as Eastern Airlines and other interested parties. But this time, no timely inquiry was ever launched, even though public statements to the contrary emanating from the highest government and Eastern sources were widelyand, as I subsequently discovered, deceptivelycirculated.

Some victims' relatives, frustrated by this inaction, wanted to embark on their own trek to the crash site. They were eventually dissuaded by one Eastern pilot who mounted his own expedition to try to get some answers. Meanwhile, the U.S. governments and Easterns delaying tactics helped insure that the reasons for the crash would remain forever buried on a barren and bleak South American mountainside.

Eleven months later, winter had again arrived in the northeast, and while sitting in the cozy warmth of my study in front of a blazing fire on a bitter cold December evening, I delved into the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) papers that were finally issued on the Flight 980 crash. The more I read, the more troubled I became. I envisioned the pitch black sky on that fateful night, only illuminated intermittently by lightning crackling from a thunderstorm visible on the jets radar directly ahead, and pictured the frigid snow swirling beneath the 727 like a stealthy whirlwind in a silent, desolate landscape more than nineteen-thousand feet above sea level. The closest bastion of warmth was the flights next stopover, La Paz, a little over fifty miles away and closing fast. But Flight 980 never made it there, its final and silent tomb instead a windswept ridge in the Bolivian Andes. I wondered what might have transpired in the final moments between the pilots acknowledgment of a descent clearance to 18,000 feet in preparation for landing at La Paz and the jets devastating impact with Mount Illimani.

At the time, as a sixteen-year veteran Eastern pilot, I was very troubled, first by the NTSBs initial refusal to conduct any investigation, then after they were forced to do so, their inexplicable delay of over ten months to even send an expedition to the crash site. I had just finished poring over the partially redacted NTSB after action report on this useless trek, which raised more questions than any it possibly answered. Never before had I witnessed so many uninvestigated possible causes and unanswered questions in light of such a serious disaster. There were too many contradictions, too much information that was conveniently ignored, overlooked, or simply cast aside, never to be examined by that U.S. government agency, at least not publicly.

No one had lifted a finger to discover what had really caused this crash.

Deepening the mystery, this was the only time since the founding of the NTSB that the cause of a crash of a United States commercial jet airliner had not undergone intense scrutiny. In addition, other Eastern pilots had subse-quently reported a number of close calls on their South American flights. Although it was these items that originally aroused my interest, I discovered that indeed there was more: something was very different about the manner in which the Flight 980 disaster was handledor mishandledwhich set it apart from every other airliner crash. So much so that I subsequently launched my own in-depth investigation, pondering why only the union that represented the pilots wanted to uncover what caused this disaster.

Just then, my private phone line unexpectedly rang. At the time I had no idea this was a call that would ultimately change the destinies of hundreds of thousands of people. I picked up the telephone, unaware that nothing would ever be the same again.

PART I

THE
BACKGROUND

CHAPTER ONE

Larry Schulte, the lanky, gray-haired chairman of the Eastern Airlines Master Executive Council (MEC) unit of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the latter the national union that represented the Eastern pilots, was on the other end of the line. I had worked with Larry a number of years prior when he was an elected representative from Easterns Washington pilot base and I was the same from New York. After exchanging pleasantries, he stated that he wanted to meet with me the following evening in Miami where the Eastern ALPA unit was headquartered. I informed him I had to fly a three-day trip, but he insisted that I call crew scheduling and have them remove me to conduct ALPA business, meaning ALPA would pick up the tab for my salary and expenses. Without further explanation, I did as requested.

I took an Eastern nonstop New York-to-Miami flight the next day to meet with Schulte over dinner. I had been away from MEC work for some time, a time-consuming, mostly thankless job that had almost cost me my marriage, given that even though I was an elected representative, a complete month of flying was required most of the time. Then, upon my arrival back home, there were normally a dozen or more phone calls awaiting me that had to be returned. There were over fifteen hundred pilots based in Easterns New York domicile, meaning something was always happening that required my attention.

As former MEC members, Schulte and I were rarely, if ever, on the same wavelength. I was more of a hardliner, while he was more willing to cede to management demands. As a result I believed he was inadequate for the grueling chairmans job. During the flight I pondered why he wanted to meet. Did he do an abrupt about-face? What was this all about ?