NATION : Weatherman Absolved in Jet Crash
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FT. WORTH — A federal judge today absolved the National Weather Service of negligence in the 1985 fatal crash of a Delta Air Lines jet during a severe thunderstorm at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.
In a 72-page opinion, U.S. District Judge David O. Belew Jr. said that Delta “failed to prove that the United States of America was guilty of any negligence.”
In the longest major aviation trial in U.S. history, attorneys for Delta had argued that the weather service was to blame for the crash that killed 132 people because crew members did not have sufficient warning about the severity of a thunderstorm at the airport. The airline had sought to make the government pay all or part of the millions of dollars in claims arising from the crash.
The Lockheed L-1011 crashed trying to land on Aug. 2, 1985, when it was caught in a wind shear, a sudden change of wind speed.
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