One of the most famous examples of an aircraft disaster that was attributed to pilot error was the night-time crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 near Miami , Florida on 29 December 1972 . The captain , first officer , and flight engineer had become fixated on a faulty landing gear light and had failed to realize that one of the crew had accidentally bumped the flight controls , altering the autopilot settings from level flight to a slow descent . Told by ATC to hold over a sparsely populated area away from the airport while they dealt with the problem ( with , as a result , very few lights visible on the ground to act as an external reference ) , the distracted flight crew did not notice the plane losing height and the aircraft eventually struck the ground in the Everglades , killing 101 of the 176 passengers and crew . The subsequent National Transportation Safety Board ( NTSB ) report on the incident blamed the flight crew for failing to monitor the aircraft 's instruments properly . Details of the incident are now frequently used as a case study in training exercises by aircrews and air traffic controllers
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401
Pilot error