United Airlines Flight 173 crew was making an approach to the Portland International Airport on the evening of Dec 28 , 1978 when they experienced a landing gear abnormality . The captain decided to enter a holding pattern so they could troubleshoot the problem . The captain focused on the landing gear problem for an hour , ignoring repeated hints from the first officer and the flight engineer about their dwindling fuel supply . Only when the engines began flaming out did he realize their dire situation . They crash landed in a wooded suburb of Portland , Oregon , over six miles short of the runway . Of the 189 people aboard , two crewmembers and eight passengers died . The NTSB made several recommendations in their report including : The NTSB Air Safety Investigator who wrote this recommendation was aviation psychologist , Dr. Alan Diehl . He was assigned to investigate this accident and realized it was similar to several other major airline accidents including the Eastern Airlines Lockheed-1011 crash into the Everglades and the runway collision between Pan Am and KLM Boeing-747s at Tenerife . Dr. Diehl was familiar with the innovative research being conducted at NASA 's Ames Research Center and elsewhere and was convinced these embryonic CRM training concepts could reduce the likelihood of human error
Pan Am and KLM Boeing-747s at Tenerife
Tenerife airport disaster
Crew resource management