Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport is already a tough place to land. It sits at a high altitude. The air is thin. But on October 31, 1979—Halloween night in the States and the eve of the Day of the Dead in Mexico—it became the site of one of the most avoidable disasters in aviation history. Western Airlines Flight 2605 was a red-eye from Los Angeles. It was a DC-10, a massive bird, carrying 88 people. Most of them didn't make it.
The crash is often overshadowed by the larger Tenerife disaster or the tragedy of American Airlines Flight 191, but for those who study "pilot error" and "controlled flight into terrain," this one is the textbook example of what happens when communication breaks down. It wasn't an engine failure. It wasn't a bomb. It was a mistake. A big, tragic, human mistake.
The Closed Runway Trap
Basically, Mexico City was doing some maintenance. Runway 23L (Left) was closed for repairs. All traffic was supposed to land on 23R (Right). Sounds simple, right? It wasn't.
The pilots of Western Airlines Flight 2605 knew about the closure. They had the NOTAMs (Notices to Air Missions). They were told by air traffic control multiple times that 23L was closed. Yet, in the early morning fog, they lined up for the wrong one. The visibility was garbage. We're talking about a thick, ground-level fog that made everything look like a blurry soup through the cockpit window.
Captain Charles Gilbert and his crew were performing an instrument approach. In theory, they should have used the ILS (Instrument Landing System) for 23L to get down through the clouds, but then sidestep—physically move the plane over—to land on the open runway, 23R. They never made the move.
Why didn't they see it?
You've got to understand the "get-there-itis" that sometimes hits pilots on long hauls. They were tired. It was 5:40 AM. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) later revealed a sense of confusion, but not panic. Not until the very end. They thought they were on the right path. They were actually descending straight onto a runway covered in construction vehicles and piles of dirt.
It's honestly chilling to listen to the transcripts. The crew realized far too late that the ground coming up at them wasn't a clear strip of tarmac. It was a graveyard of machinery.
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The Moment of Impact
The DC-10 hit the ground on the left gear first, touching down on the grass and the shoulder of the closed runway 23L. Even then, they might have survived if the runway had been empty. But it wasn't.
The plane slammed into a massive dump truck filled with ten tons of earth.
That collision was the end. The impact ripped the right gear off and tore into the wing. The plane became a 400,000-pound projectile. It veered off, striking a taxiway and eventually crashing into a flight operations building. The building collapsed. The plane erupted in a fireball.
In the end, 72 people on the plane died. One person on the ground—the driver of that dump truck—also lost their life. Somehow, 16 people survived the wreckage, crawling out of a fuselage that looked like shredded aluminum foil.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Cause
People love to blame the airport. They say, "Why was a truck on the runway?" or "Why wasn't the lighting better?" While those are valid questions, the official investigation by the Mexican government, with help from the NTSB, pointed the finger squarely at the crew.
They ignored the "minimums."
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In aviation, "minimums" are the lowest altitude you can descend to before you MUST see the runway. If you don't see it, you go around. You climb back up and try again or go to another airport. The Western Airlines Flight 2605 crew went way below their minimums without having the runway in sight. They were "hunting" for the ground in the fog.
The Role of Fatigue
Honestly, we don't talk enough about the human element in 1970s aviation. There was a sort of "cowboy" culture. Pushing the limits was common. But a DC-10 is a lot of airplane to handle when you're tired and flying into a high-altitude bowl surrounded by mountains.
The investigation highlighted:
- Failure to follow the approved sidestep procedure.
- Lack of crew coordination (the co-pilot didn't challenge the captain's descent).
- Descent below decision height without visual contact.
It was a chain of errors. If any one of those links had been broken—if the captain had decided to go around just ten seconds earlier—everyone would have walked away.
The Legacy of Western Airlines Flight 2605
This crash changed how pilots are trained for "sidestep" maneuvers. It’s not just "veer to the right and hope for the best." There are now much stricter protocols for how these transitions are announced and executed in the cockpit.
It also served as a grim reminder about the dangers of "runway incursions." Even if a runway is closed, it needs to be treated as a live hazard. The fact that a dump truck was parked in a spot where an off-course plane could hit it became a major talking point in airport safety circles.
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Western Airlines itself didn't last forever, eventually merging with Delta in the 1980s. But for aviation buffs and safety experts, the "Night of the Dead" crash remains a haunting example of how even the most experienced pilots can lose their "situational awareness." That's a fancy way of saying they lost track of where they were in space. And in a plane, that's the one thing you can't afford to do.
Safety Lessons You Can Take Away
If you’re a private pilot or just someone interested in why planes stay in the sky, there are a few things to chew on here. First, "minimums" are there for a reason. They aren't suggestions. Second, communication in any high-stakes environment has to be blunt. If the co-pilot had said, "We are on the wrong runway, pull up now," the outcome might have been different.
For the rest of us, it's a reminder that travel is remarkably safe today because of the blood shed in accidents like Flight 2605. We have better radar, better GPS, and a much better culture of safety where co-pilots are encouraged to speak up.
Next Steps for Deeper Research
To truly understand the mechanics of this disaster, you should look into the NTSB's historical archives regarding "Controlled Flight Into Terrain" (CFIT). You can also find the declassified CVR transcripts online. Reading them is a sobering experience that puts you right in that cockpit at 5:00 AM, feeling the fog press against the glass.
Check out the "Sidestep Maneuver" regulations in the FAA's Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge to see how the rules have evolved since 1979. It’s the best way to see the direct impact this tragedy had on modern flight.