Northwest Airlines Flight 255
On August 16, 1987, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, operating as Northwest Airlines Flight 255, crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, about 8:46 pm EDT, resulting in the deaths of all six crew members and 148 of the 149 passengers, along with two people on the ground. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl named Cecelia Cichan, who sustained serious injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident was the flight deck crew's failure to set flaps and slats for takeoff. A contributing factor was a lack of power to the aircraft's central aural warning system, which prevented the takeoff warning system from providing an audio alert to the crew of the improper takeoff configuration.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was a twin-engined McDonnell Douglas MD-82, a derivative of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series of aircraft. The jet was manufactured in 1981, entered service with Republic Airlines, and was acquired by Northwest Airlines in its merger with Republic in 1986. The aircraft was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-217 turbofan engines.Crew
Two pilots and four flight attendants crewed Flight 255. The captain was John R. Maus, 57, from Las Vegas, Nevada, and David J. Dodds, 35, from Galena, Illinois.Maus had logged 20,859 flight hours in his career, with 1,359 of those on the McDonnell Douglas MD-80. He had continuously worked for the airline and its predecessors for 31 years, during which time he had also flown the Fairchild F-27, Boeing 727, Boeing 757, and McDonnell Douglas DC-9. Other pilots who had flown with Maus described him as a "competent and capable pilot" who had a reputation for operating "by the book."
Dodds had 8,044 flight hours, with 1,604 on the MD-82, and had continuously worked for the airline and its predecessors for more than 8 years. Captains with whom Dodds had flown graded him as average or above average, describing him as competent, thorough, personable, easy to work with, and not hesitant to call out potential problems to senior pilots.
Schedule
The flight crew began their workday on August 16, 1987, scheduled to operate the accident aircraft together for a total of four flight segments. The first leg, operating as Northwest Flight 750, was from Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport to MBS International Airport in Saginaw, Michigan. From there, the same flight crew and aircraft continued as Flight 255, with scheduled stops at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Michigan; Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona; and the final destination at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California. Other than a minor problem taxiing to the arrival gate, the flight from Saginaw to Detroit was uneventful. During the stopover at Detroit, a Northwest Airlines mechanic inspected the aircraft and the logbook.Accident
At roughly 20:32 EDT, Flight 255 departed the gate in Detroit with 149 passengers and six crew members. At pushback, the total weight of the airliner was, just under the maximum allowable weight of.At 20:34:50, Flight 255 was cleared for taxi to runway 3C. The crew was also informed about the update of the automatic terminal information service information, to which Dodds reported on weather data update. At 20:35:43, the ground controller instructed to use taxiway C and switch to frequency 119.45 MHz to communicate with another controller. Dodds acknowledged the instructions to follow the taxiways, but did not repeat the new frequency and did not tune the radio to it. The dispatch packet provided by the airline included takeoff performance data based on using runways 21L or 21R, but the flight was cleared for takeoff on Detroit's runway 3C, the shortest available runway. The flight crew had to reconfigure the on-board computer for taking off on runway 3C. Dodds also recalculated the allowable takeoff weight for the flight, and concluded the weight of the aircraft was within this limit. In the process of taxiing, Flight 255 missed the required turn, so Dodds contacted the ground controller and received instructions on how to proceed to runway 3C, and also to switch to 119.45 MHz. Dodds again acknowledged the instructions and this time acknowledged the new frequency and switched to it. The second ground controller specified the route to runway 3C. The crew also received a brief weather report.
At 20:42:11, Flight 255 was instructed to position and hold at the beginning of runway 3C. The controller advised that a 3-minute delay was needed to allow the wake turbulence from the previous aircraft that had taken off to dissipate. At 20:44:04, Flight 255 was cleared for takeoff.
Flight 255 made its takeoff roll on Detroit's runway 3C at 20:44:21, with Maus at the controls, as recorded on the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder :
The plane lifted off the runway at, and began to roll from side to side just under above the ground. The MD-82's rate of climb was greatly reduced as a result of the flaps not being extended, and about past the end of runway 3C, the plane's left wing struck a light pole in an airport rental car lot. The impact caused the left wing to start disintegrating and catch fire. The plane rolled 90° to the left, striking the roof of an Avis Car Rental building. The now uncontrolled plane crashed inverted onto Middlebelt Road and struck vehicles just north of its intersection with Wick Road, killing two people on the ground in a car. It then broke apart, with the fuselage skidding across the road, disintegrating and bursting into flames as it hit a Norfolk Southern railroad overpass and the overpass of eastbound Interstate 94.
Casualties
All 6 crew members and 148 of the 149 passengers were killed in the accident. Of the passengers who died, 21 were children, the youngest being 6 months old. Many of the passengers were from the Phoenix metropolitan area; one of them was Nick Vanos, an NBA center for the Phoenix Suns. Among the deceased were five foreigners: three Britons, one Bahamian and one Guyanese. Two motorists on nearby Middlebelt Road also died and five people on the ground were injured, one seriously. The bodies were moved to the Northwest hangar at the airport, which served as a temporary morgue.The sole survivor of the crash was Cecelia Cichan, a four-year-old girl from Tempe, Arizona, who was returning home alongside her mother, Paula, father, Michael, and a six-year-old brother, David, after visiting relatives in Pennsylvania. Romulus firemen found Cichan still belted in her seat, which was faced down. She was found several feet from the bodies of her family. Believing that no one on the aircraft could have survived, officials at first announced that Cichan was an automobile passenger. She sustained third-degree burns and fractures to her skull, collarbone, and left leg. After the accident, Cichan moved to live with her maternal aunt and uncle in Birmingham, Alabama. She spoke to the media about her experience for the first time in 2011. In a 2022 interview for WDIV-TV marking 35 years since the crash, John Thiede, now a captain at the Romulus Fire Department, noted his friendship with Cichan since the mid-2000s when they made contact, and attended Cichan's 2007 wedding.
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the accident.Eyewitnesses stated that Flight 255's takeoff roll was longer than usual and that the aircraft took off at a steeper angle. Their statements on whether or not the flaps and slats were extended varied, but most responded that they were extended, although they could not tell how far.
The CVR provided evidence of the flight crew's omission of the taxi checklist. Although the stall warning was annunciated, investigators determined from the CVR that the aural takeoff warning was not annunciated by that warning system. The NTSB was unable to determine a cause for the electrical-power failure in the central aural warning system :
The investigators spoke with other MD-80 pilots and learned that many of them found it a nuisance to hear a take-off configuration warning while they were simply taxiing. It was so common for pilots to pull the P-40 circuit breaker that the area around the circuit breaker was smudged from routinely being manipulated. This circuit breaker also controls some of the stall warning sounds. This coincided with the missing sounds from the CVR of the incident flight.
While the investigators felt that the P-40 circuit breaker probably had been pulled by the pilot on the incident flight, they could not definitely confirm if the circuit breaker had been tripped, intentionally opened, or if electric current failed to flow through the breaker to the CAWS while the breaker was closed:
NTSB conclusions
The NTSB published its final report on May 10, 1988, in which it concluded that the accident was caused by pilot error:Additionally, the NTSB found in a simulation that the aircraft could have cleared the light pole and recovered despite its flaps and slats being in the retracted position:
Aftermath
After the accident, Northwest retired the flight number 255 along with its counterpart flight number 254, which was the outbound flight from Phoenix to Detroit. They were changed to Flights 260 and 261 beginning in September 1987 until the company merged with Delta Air Lines in early 2010. It was still operated by the MD-82 alongside DC-9s and Boeing 727s but were replaced by Boeing 757s and Airbus A320s in the 1990s. Delta continues the retirement of 255 by Northwest; as of 2025, Delta has no flight 255.It remains the deadliest aircraft accident in the history of the state of Michigan, and it was the worst crash in the history of Northwest Airlines. Before the crash of Air India Flight 171 in 2025, it was also the deadliest aviation accident to have a sole survivor.
Memorials
In memory of the victims, a black granite memorial was erected in 1994; it stands at the top of the hill at Middlebelt Road and I-94, the site of the accident. The memorial has a dove with a ribbon in its beak reading, "Their spirit still lives on ..."; below it are the names of those who perished in the accident. Another monument to the victims stands next to Phoenix City Hall.Also, a marker stone is located at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, MI, in memory of the 14 GM employees and seven family members who were killed in the accident. Most were traveling to the GM Desert Proving Ground in Mesa, Arizona.
On August 16, 2007, the 20th anniversary of the accident, a memorial service was held at the site. For some people affected by the incident, this was their first return to the site since the accident.
On August 16, 2012, the 25th anniversary of the accident, another memorial service was held at the accident site. Family and friends of the victims and others from across the Metro Detroit area attended, and a local priest read each victim's name aloud. Two more memorial services were held there on August 16, 2017, the 30th anniversary, and on August 16, 2022, the 35th anniversary. Annual meet-ups have become a tradition.
In popular culture
The accident of Northwest Airlines Flight 255 was covered in 2010 in "Alarming Silence", a season-9 episode of the internationally syndicated Canadian TV documentary series Mayday.The sole survivor of the accident was a four-year old child who appeared in the 2013 documentary Sole Survivor. She did not speak publicly about the crash until 2013, when the documentary was released.
In 2016, motorsport journalist Tom Higgins posted his recollections of Northwest 255. Higgins, then of The Charlotte Observer, and fellow NASCAR beat reporters Steve Waid and Gary McCredie arrived at a hotel near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport awaiting a Monday morning flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, after finishing coverage of the Champion Spark Plug 400 that afternoon at Michigan International Speedway, and were witnesses to the plane crash. For years, Higgins feared the August NASCAR weekend after this crash, noting how he was a witness on Middlebelt Road.
In her 2018 memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little, Busy Philipps mentioned that her friend Megan Briggs died the summer going into 5th grade on this plane crash. Briggs was eight years old and died alongside her parents and older brother.