Chilling cockpit footage reveals the final moments of an Alaska Airlines jet that crashed, ending everyone’s lives on board

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Harrowing cockpit audio captured the moment an Alaska Airlines jet crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 was planned to fly from Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico, to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Washington.

While the plane successfully departed Mexico, it never arrived at its intended destination because it encountered mechanical issues throughout the journey.

The jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing all 88 persons on board, including 83 passengers, three cabin staff, and two pilots.

25 years after the sad event, it remains one of the deadliest aviation tragedies in contemporary US history.

Despite this, discussions about the terrible occurrence persist today, and the cockpit audio has recently resurfaced on social media.

The flight in question was piloted by 53-year-old Captain Ted Thompson and 57-year-old First Officer Bill Tansky, who had a combined 12,000 hours on McDonnell Douglas MD-80s, according to AeroTime.

However, despite their extensive knowledge, it was later discovered that a portion of the plane’s tail assembly broke owing to a lack of lubrication in the jackscrew assembly.

Captain Thompson was heard on the rediscovered audio warning air traffic control that they were ‘in a dive.’

He went on to say, “Not a dive yet, but we’ve lost vertical control of our airplane.”

Thompson then claimed they had things under control, but First Officer Tanksy disagreed, saying, ‘No, we don’t.’

Tanksy and Thompson began to troubleshoot the aircraft in order to resolve the issue.

The pair became silent for a moment as an air traffic control operator spoke with another pilot in the air, thought to be flying an Aero Commander 690A at the time, and asked to ‘keep a watch on [the Alaska Airlines flight].’

This pilot then alerted air traffic control that the Alaska Airlines plane had ‘just started to make a major, enormous drop.’

A second pilot supported the other’s statement, explaining that Flight 261 was ‘clearly in a nose-down posture.’

Shortly thereafter, the two planes that were watching the Alaska Airlines jet plunge reported that it had impacted the ocean. The collision destroyed the airplane.

The Federal Aviation Administration went on to investigate the tragedy.

According to a statement, “The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of this accident was a loss of airplane pitch control caused by the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew assembly’s Acme nut threads.”

“The thread failure was caused by excessive wear resulting from Alaska Airlines’ insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly.”

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