Expert: D. Norkus - 5/23/2009

Question
hi dottie-american airlines 965 went down near cali columbia airport dec 20, 1995. in the accident report transcript, the pilot & atc keep saying things like cleared direct to cali VOR & report uh tulua VOR. what does VOR mean? thanks kathleen

Answer
Kathleen

A VOR is an aid to navigation for aircraft.

It is an acronym for a Very high frequency Omni-directional Range radio beacon. Here is a very complete explanation of what a VOR is and does (for non-pilot flight sim enthusiasts) with illustrations-  

http://www.navfltsm.addr.com/vor-nav.htm

AA 965 was cleared for a VOR DME (distance measuring equipment, reads mileage and used for positional awareness) instrument approach procedure:  "965 is cleared to the VOR DME approach runway one niner, ROZO Number One arrival, report Tulua VOR".

Perhaps this link will help with the visual of flight 965, as it has some diagrams of the course and an excellent commentary on the accident-
http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/taa_appb.pdf
The first 6 pages of the document are quite a good read on this unfortunate accident.

This link also details problems with the terminology used by ATC that certainly could have added to the cockpit confusion regarding the course to be flown- http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/Research/Rvs/Misc/Ad...

Dottie