Jury: Crash Mostly Airline's Fault

A federal jury Tuesday found that an aviation computer software company and a flight computer manufacturer contributed to the 1995 crash of an American Airlines jetliner in Colombia, but said American was 75 percent responsible.

American Airlines alleged that products from the onboard computer maker Honeywell Air Transport Systems of Phoenix and software maker Jeppesen Sanderson of Englewood, Colo., helped cause the crash of Flight 965 near Cali. The accident killed 159 people, including the pilots. Four people survived.

The jury said Jeppesen was 17 percent responsible and Honeywell was 8 percent at fault. It said the two companies produced a defective product used by the airline.

The nine-week trial before U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages was an attempt by American to force the two companies to pay a portion of the $300 million already paid out by the airline and its insurers to crash victims and families.

American blamed the Jeppesen software in the Honeywell computer, saying Jeppesen stored the location of the Cali airport beacon in a different computer file than most beacons.

The pilots overshot one navigational beacon, and then entered an incorrect code into the flight computer, placing the Boeing 757 onto a direct collision course with the Colombian mountainside.

The flight from Miami was carrying mostly Colombians heading home for Christmas on the evening of Dec. 20.

Lawyers for the computer firms have argued that the beacon code could have been properly accessed and that the pilots were in error.

Colombian crash investigators blamed the crew for the crash.

A different U.S. federal judge ruled in September 1997 that the crew caused the crash, saying no reasonable jury could find otherwise, and allowed victims' damage suits to proceed against American alone.

But an appeals court later rejected that ruling and said a jury must decide blame, resulting in this trial.

Meanwhile, most family lawsuits against American have been settled.