- ACCIDENT DETAILS
Date: May 08, 1978
Time: 2120
Location: Pensacola, Florida
Operator: National Airlines
Flight #: 193
Route: Miami, FL - Pensacola, FL - Mobile, AL
AC Type: Boeing B-727-235
Registration: N4744
cn / ln: 19464
Aboard: 58   (passengers:52  crew:6)
Fatalities: 3   (passengers:3  crew:0)
Ground: 0
Summary: The aircraft crashed while attempting a non-precision instrument approach to Pensacola and landed in 12 feet of water, 3 nm short of the runway. Failure of the crew to monitor altitude and descent rate and the failure of the 1st officer to provide the captain with the required altitude and approach performance call-outs. Also the flight engineer disabled the GPWS alarm so the crew could hear one another better. In addition, the night flight had been diverted from its primary airport due to poor weather and was required to execute a compressed approach (descending and approaching more quickly and steeply than normal), and the crucial altimeter readout was an old drum-roll-counter type (due to be replaced), which could easily be misread, especially in heavy workload situations. Three fatalities occurred when the frightened passengers grabbed their seat cushions and exited the plane from the rear. They drowned in part because their seat cushions were not flotation cushions. The airplane was not required to have floatation cushions because it was not flying over water.
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