The flight crew of an American Airlines Boeing 737-800 could not stop the aircraft on the remaining runway after it touched down far beyond the approach threshold at the airport in Kingston, Jamaica, the night of Dec. 22, 2009. Fourteen passengers were seriously injured and the aircraft was destroyed when it overran the runway onto a rocky beach.
In a recently published report on the mishap, the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority (JCAA) concluded that “the flight crew’s decision to land on a wet runway with a 14-knot tail wind, their reduced situational awareness and failure to conduct a go-around after the aircraft floated longer than usual contributed to the accident.”
The report said that in the last seconds of the approach to Runway 12 at Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport, the captain might have been affected by a visual illusion that caused him to perceive that the aircraft was too low and to make control inputs that prolonged the touchdown.
Contributing to t…
