Cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcripts indicate that although the ill-fated Alaska Airline Flight 261 was diverted to Los Angeles Airport, the flight dispatcher wanted to have the plane continue to San Francisco. The dispatchers believed that diverting the plane would lead to schedule (flow) issues. Starting at 00:19 UTC, the CVR captured the sounds of a minimum of four thumps followed shortly after by a loud bang as an overstrained jackscrew assembly dissociated from the acme nut that held it in place.
The jackscrew assembly’s failure affected the vertical stabilizer, leading the plane to pitch over into a dive rapidly. Air traffic control alerted nearby aircraft to maintain visual contact with flight 261. One of the nearby planes radioed back that the stricken flight 261 had started performing a huge plunge. During the final event, the nose-diving aircraft’s pilots did not send back any communication, although the CVR captured the co-pilot saying “mayday.”
Records from the CVR reveal that the pilots attempted endlessly to regain control of the airplane as it nose-dived. Indeed, having failed to raise the nose, the pilots at one point tried to fly the plane upside down so that they could maintain control. Unfortunately, the damages sustained by the plane were too critical for the plane to perform any better. The situation was beyond recovery; the plane inverted and descended nose-down at 151 miles per hour from 18,000 feet high, impacting the Pacific Ocean shortly before 00:12 UTC, 14 miles (12 nautical miles) offshore, between Anacapa Island and California’s Port Hueneme. The impact forces destroyed the aircraft, and the blunt force impact trauma killed all 88 occupants on board.