The haunting final moments of Alaska Airlines Flight 261

Plane crashes are always horrifying — but few haunt the imagination like Alaska Airlines Flight 261.

Now, 25 years after the tragic plunge into the Pacific Ocean, newly released cockpit audio is sending fresh waves of chills through listeners, reviving the nightmare.

A haunting echo from the past

What began as a routine flight quickly spiraled into a catastrophe that no one could have predicted. On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 departed from the sun-soaked, palm-fringed airport of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, bound for Seattle, with a scheduled stop in San Francisco.

Eighty-eight lives were aboard — travelers heading home, families savoring a vacation, and a crew seasoned by countless flights. All trusted that this journey would be just like any other.

But fate had other plans. The plane vanished before reaching its destination, forever marking a day of unimaginable loss and horror.

Instead of reaching its destination, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plunged into the cold depths of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California — taking all 88 souls aboard with it. Among them were 83 passengers, three cabin crew members, and both pilots. No one survived.

This tragedy is far more than a grim footnote in aviation history. It’s a haunting chapter that refuses to fade — a stark warning of how a single overlooked detail can unravel into catastrophic disaster.

A stalwart of the skies

To understand the horror of January 31, 2000, we must look beyond the final, fatal descent. We need to trace back to the roots — to the aircraft’s design, its maintenance, and decisions made years before it ever left the ground.

The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, a rugged descendant of the legendary DC-9. Introduced in 1965, the MD-80 series earned a reputation as a dependable workhorse of commercial aviation.

While some upgrades had been implemented over the years, many critical components—especially in the tail—remained unchanged. Among them was the jackscrew, a vital mechanism controlling the angle of the horizontal stabilizer, which allows the plane to pitch up or down. Without a functioning jackscrew, pilots lose critical control over the aircraft’s trim, making stable flight nearly impossible.

Though designed to be durable and built with supposed redundancies, the truth was far grimmer. The jackscrew’s nut, made of softer metal, was destined to wear down first. Its smooth operation depended entirely on proper lubrication.

But over time, maintenance checks were delayed, inspection intervals stretched, and what once was a top priority became just another item on a checklist — with devastating consequences.

Heroes in the cockpit

At the helm were Captain Ted Thompson, 53, and First Officer Bill Tansky, 57. Together, they had over 12,000 hours flying the MD-80 — a staggering amount of experience that would be tested to the limit that day.

Everything seemed routine until the plane climbed to cruising altitude at around 31,000 feet. Suddenly, the stabilizer jammed. First Officer Tansky quickly disengaged the autopilot and took manual control.

What followed was a desperate battle for control. The aircraft became stubborn and difficult to maneuver, demanding incredible force to maintain altitude. The crew worked through emergency checklists, communicated with operations, and even considered having instructors guide them remotely. Their decision was to divert to Los Angeles.

Then came the moment that changed everything.

The final fight

While troubleshooting, Captain Thompson activated multiple switches related to the stabilizer trim system. The worn Acme nut inside the jackscrew, already dangerously weakened, finally gave way.

The stabilizer slammed fully nose-down, pitching the plane violently forward.

“We’re in a dive,” Captain Thompson radioed. Then corrected himself: “Not a dive yet, but we’ve lost vertical control of our airplane.”

“No, we don’t,” First Officer Tansky replied grimly.

Displaying extraordinary skill and determination, they managed to pull the plane out of the initial dive. But the damage was irreversible — the jackscrew mechanism had broken completely.

In a final act of desperation, Captain Thompson rolled the aircraft upside down, flying inverted in a last-ditch effort to regain control. Few pilots could have even imagined attempting such a maneuver — let alone under life-or-death pressure.

It wasn’t enough.

The plane slammed into the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California coast — killing everyone on board.

Witnesses to the horror

Nearby pilots were asked to keep an eye on Flight 261. One radioed in:

“Just started to do a big, huge plunge.”

Another confirmed, “Definitely in a nose-down position.”

Moments later, the grim news came through — the plane had crashed into the water. There were no survivors.

The grease that wasn’t there

When investigators recovered the flight data recorders and the broken jackscrew assembly, the findings were chilling.

The threads on the Acme nut were nearly completely stripped away — sheared off from relentless wear. And most shocking of all:

There was no grease.

None at all.

Years of deferred maintenance, missed inspections, and compromised safety protocols had silently set the stage for disaster.

The official cause
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the probable cause of the crash was a catastrophic loss of pitch control, triggered by the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system’s jackscrew assembly—specifically, the Acme nut threads. This failure was the direct result of excessive wear caused by Alaska Airlines’ insufficient lubrication of the critical jackscrew mechanism.

In response, 24 urgent safety recommendations were issued to Alaska Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration. These directives focused on tightening maintenance schedules, enhancing inspection protocols, and improving oversight of vital aircraft systems.

Heroes remembered

Among the 88 lives lost were several notable individuals whose absence is deeply felt: author Jean Gandesbery and her husband Robert; financial talk show host Cynthia Oti; celebrated wine columnist Tom Stockley and his wife Margaret; and Morris Thompson, former Alaska Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner, along with his wife Thelma and daughter Sheryl.

Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer Bill Tansky were posthumously awarded the Air Line Pilots Association Gold Medal for Heroism. Their extraordinary composure and skill under unimaginable pressure stand as a lasting tribute to their courage and professionalism.

Their final flight is far more than a tale of tragedy — it’s a sobering reminder of the catastrophic consequences when safety is compromised for convenience.

But it’s also a story of valor: two pilots who fought relentlessly to save their plane and passengers, a disaster that shook the aviation industry to its core, and a legacy that continues to resonate, 25 years on.