ABSTRACT
O n the morning of August 31, 1988, Flight 1141, a Boeing 727, was moving slowly in a long taxi queue for departure from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. Because of the delay, the crew shut down the number three engine to conserve fuel. When the ight was fourth in line for takeoff, the crew restarted the engine and began running the checklists used to conrm that the airplane’s systems were properly set. While they were running the checklists the air trafc controller unexpectedly told them to move up past the other airplanes to the runway, and 30 seconds later the controller cleared Flight 1141 to take off. The crew rushed to complete preparations for takeoff. When the ight engineer, who was reading the checklists aloud, called out the item for verifying that wing aps and leading edge slats were set to the takeoff position, the rst ofcer quickly responded “Fifteen, fteen, green light,” indicating that the inboard aps and outboard aps were correctly set to 15 degrees and that the green light indicating the slats were deployed was illuminated.
