Plane Incident Not All Mechanical

It was not only a mechanical problem, but a failure to monitor the indicators by an airliner’s flight crew that led to an American Airlines jetliner overrunning the runway in Jackson Hole in December of 2010.  That was the finding of the National Transportation Safety Board earlier this week.  The plane was arriving from Chicago when the plane slowing devices failed to deploy upon landing and the Boeing 757 continued 730 feet into the snowdrifts on the southern end of the runway before stopping.  No-one was hurt in the incident.  During a hearing on the matter Tuesday in Washington D.C., an NTSB investigator said had the crew deployed the speed brakes manually, the plane would have stopped in time.  The NTSB recommended training and other guidance now for pilots to address such situations that are typically handled automatically and so reliably that their failure takes pilots and crew by surprise.