Pilot Who Helped Fly Crippled Jet In 1989 Dies

Fitch, who had suffered from brain cancer, died at his home in the Chicago suburb of St. Charles. His role began with a small, seemingly meaningless decision he never understood: to get on Flight 232 instead of another flight scheduled to depart five minutes earlier on July 19.

Sitting in a window seat in the last row of first class, Fitch had just finished his lunch and asked for a cup coffee.

Suddenly, the explosion spilled his coffee. As an instructional pilot, he had just spent days training fellow airmen for every conceivable kind of problem ⿿ hydraulic failure, immovable flaps, fires and more. He tried to assure a worried flight attendant that everything was going to be fine.

"She said, 'No, you don't understand, we've lost control of the plane,'" Fitch's widow, Rosa, said Wednesday.

The engine in the plane's tail had exploded, sending chunks of metal into the jet's three hydraulic systems. What the crew knew was this: The only thing they could do was turn right by using the engines to vary the amount of thrust on each side.

So for more than 40 minutes, the aircraft flew in circles as it aimed for the Sioux City airport. Al Haynes, the captain who understood as well as anyone the danger of the situation, asked air traffic controllers to keep the jet away from the city.

In an interview for a documentary about the crash, Fitch talked about how his life, anybody's life, can change in an instant.

"What makes you so sure you're going to make it home tonight?" he said. "I was 46 years old the day I walked into that cockpit. I had the world ahead of me. I was a captain on a major U.S. airline. I had a beautiful healthy family, loving wife, great future. And at 4 o'clock I'm trying to stay alive."

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