nto a position where they, unknowingly, made a bad decision that ultimately cost them their life. 20. The flightcrews decision to conduct the flight at night was influenced by the succession of delays they had experienced earlier in the day.The Safety Board looked into whether the flightcrews decision to fly the FEF at night was prompted by supervisory or self-imposed pressure. Although being close to Christmas Day and the crewmembers all being TDY to Greensboro NC from their homes in Wilmington OH, this was found not to be a factor. However the completion of the modifications to the accident airplane had been delayed for several months. This had caused the marketing managers to inform a freight charter customer expecting delivery of this airplane that its charters were subject to cancellation on short notice. The Safety Board was unable to identify the accident flightcrews state of awareness of plans for the accident airplane, but because both the PF and the PNF were managers at ABX they should have been aware of the companys desire to place the airplane in revenue service as soon as possible. They then most likely would have responded with a strong effort to get the job done. Having experienced a succession of delays for maintenance from a scheduled departure of 1320 hours, it may have been more difficult for them to reverse their decision to perform the flight. CONCLUSIONThe NTSB determined the probable causes of the accident were the inappropriate control inputs applied by the flying pilot during a stall recovery attempt, the failure of the nonflying pilot-in-command to recognize, address, and correct these inappropriate control inputs and the failure of ABX to establish a formal functional evaluation flight program that included adequate program guidelines, requirements and pilot training for performance of these flights. Contributing to the causes of the accident were the inoperative stick shaker stall warning system and t...
