10/25/2026
On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 took off from Puerto Vallarta, heading north toward San Francisco and Seattle. On board the MD-83 were 88 people - including airline employees and their families going home.
In the cockpit were two seasoned aviators: Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer Bill Tansky.
During their climb up the California coast, something in the tail jammed. The pitch controls locked up. For nearly two hours at 31,000 feet, Thompson and Tansky calmly worked the problem, trying everything in their power to regain control.
Then, off the coast of Los Angeles ...
The nose suddenly pitched down, sending the jet into a terrifying 6,000-foot-per-minute dive. With sheer brute force, both pilots pulled back on the yoke with over 130 pounds of pressure - stopping the plunge at 24,000 feet.
Captain Thompson radioed Air Traffic Control. But even in total crisis, his first thought was the people below.
Knowing his aircraft was severely compromised, he asked for permission to keep maneuvering "out here over the bay, if I may." He refused to risk bringing a failing airliner over a populated city like Los Angeles until he knew if it was controllable.
They gave him the ocean.
Minutes later, as they prepared for an emergency landing, the tail structure broke completely. The jet pitched into a dramatic 70-degree dive and rolled completely inverted - flying belly-up over the Pacific.
What followed was an extraordinary feat of airmanship.
“Push and roll, push and roll,” Thompson urged.
For nearly a full minute, inverted and plummeting toward the sea, Thompson and Tansky literally flew the airliner upside down. By doing so, they managed to fight the dive down from 70 degrees to just 9 degrees.
As they fought for every inch of altitude, one of them uttered a line that still chills aviation historians:
"At least upside down we’re flyin'."
They never gave up. They fought the machine until the very last second.
At 4:21 PM, Flight 261 struck the Pacific Ocean near Anacapa Island. All 88 lives were lost.
A week later, investigators recovered a 2-foot threaded metal rod from the ocean floor - the horizontal stabilizer's jackscrew. Its threads had been completely worn smooth because of a lack of proper lubrication during routine maintenance. A failure that cost 88 lives.
Captain Ted Thompson and First Officer Bill Tansky were posthumously awarded the Air Line Pilots Association Gold Medal for Heroism. They didn't just fight to save their passengers - they deliberately steered a broken aircraft away from homes on the ground.
Today, on the beach at Port Hueneme, a sundial stands bearing all 88 names around its base.
And every year on January 31, at exactly 4:22 PM, its shadow falls directly upon a heart-shaped marker.
Never stop fighting, no matter how upside down things get.
