Northwest Airlines Flight 255, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashed in Romulus, Michigan, shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on August 16, 1987, at about 8:46 p.m. It killed all six crew members and 148 passengers, and two people on the ground. There was only one survivor, it was a 4-year-old girl who sustained serious injuries. It was the second-deadliest aviation accident at the time in the United States and the second-deadliest involving the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series; as of 2013, the crash is the fourth-deadliest in both categories and the third-deadliest sole-survivor incident in aviation history.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause of the accident was the flight crew’s failure to use the taxi checklist to ensure that the flaps and slats were extended for takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the absence of electrical power to the airplane takeoff warning system, which thus did not warn the flight crew that the airplane was not configured properly for takeoff. The reason for the absence of electrical power could not be determined. Still, as you will see in the video, it was suspected that pilots were pulling the fuse that powered the safety systems (alarms for deviated setup at take-off) because of “nuisance alarms.”
This accident is a classic case of humans losing their place in their routines, routines they had done hundreds of times. They got a runway change at the last minute, and they were running behind; they were trying to beat bad weather, etc. This caused them to make errors in their take-off setup AND their failure to use the take-off checklist. The accident also caused a major overhaul in the safety-critical checklists. This included the flow of the checklist, a standardized font, a means to help pilots not loose their place on the checklist, etc.