Well There‘s Your Problem
Well There‘s Your Problem

Episode 195: Alaska Airlines Flight 261

March 13, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83 flying from Puerto Vallarta to Seattle with a stop in San Francisco, crashed into the Pacific Ocean after the crew lost control of the aircraft. All 88 people on board were killed. The pilots, Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer William Tanskey, fought for nearly ten minutes to keep the plane in the air, wrestling the controls with over a hundred pounds of force as the aircraft pitched into a dive, briefly recovered, then rolled inverted and hit the water at high speed. The cause was not pilot error, bad weather, or a freak mechanical fluke. It was a jackscrew that had not been lubricated for years, because Alaska Airlines had decided that maintaining its planes cost too much money.

The Airline and the Aircraft

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:01) **Opening Banter & Guest Introductions** - The hosts banter about trains, the NS Savannah, and introduce the episode's topic: Alaska Airlines Flight 261.
  • 2 (12:17) **Alaska Airlines: From Bush Pilot to Major Carrier** - The history of Alaska Airlines, from its founding in 1932 to its aggressive cost-cutting in the 1990s.
  • 3 (79:17) **The MD-80's Jackscrew: How Trim Works** - A technical explanation of the horizontal stabilizer and jackscrew system on the MD-80.
  • 4 (100:05) **The Flight: Alaska Airlines 261** - The flight departs Puerto Vallarta; the crew discovers the horizontal stabilizer is jammed in a nose-down position.
  • 5 (113:49) **Catastrophic Failure and Crash** - The crew's attempt to free the jammed stabilizer causes the jackscrew to fail completely, sending the plane into an uncontrollable dive.
  • 6 (131:02) **Investigation: The Jackscrew and the Missing Lubrication** - The NTSB investigation reveals the jackscrew nut was completely stripped of threads due to a lack of lubrication.
  • 7 (150:37) **Systemic Failure: Alaska Airlines' Cost-Cutting** - The investigation reveals a culture of cost-cutting at Alaska Airlines that directly led to the crash.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

those pesky screwjacks are at it again

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in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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