Originally Posted By: fdcg27
It was a -200.
IIRC, the aircraft had been held awaiting a clearance for a long time after it had been properly squirted with glycol.
IIRC a little more, this flight would have been fine had the crew shoved the loud levers all the way forward during their takeoff run.
They didn't and left the runway with too little airspeed.
A tragic event, but then DCA isn't the greatest airport either.
A combination of errors and miscalculations, as is true of most airline accidents.
The crew did not activate anti-ice measures. The result was engine instrumentaton probes iced over and gave erroneous readings.This led the crew to think they were at full engine power, but in reality the engines were making substantially less. Simply pushing power levers to max when they realized the takeoff run was slow would have saved the plane and passengers.