Kevin Bachman, the Sioux City, Iowa, air traffic controller who guided United Air Lines Flight 232 on the last 36 minutes of its descent, said Friday that he wept after watching the DC-10 cartwheel down a runway and burst into flames.
"I had to turn away because I didn't think anybody would make it. Then I went downstairs and I cried," Bachman said Friday at a news conference after listening with reporters to the control-tower tape of his July 19 conversations with two United pilots.Bachman said he did not learn until about five hours later, after interviews with Federal Aviation Administration officials and safety investigators, that there were many survivors. At final count, 111 perished and 185 survived.
Bachman, 27, of Virginia Beach, said he has been a fully qualified FAA controller for only three months, after training for almost two years in St. Louis. Yet from the time he assumed responsibility for guiding the crippled jumbo jet to the moment before the crash, he said he was too busy concentrating to feel nervous. "I just basically did my job," he said.