NEW YORK -- Less than 10 minutes before Avianca Flight 052 crashed onto a Long Island hillside on Jan. 25, Capt. Laureano Caviedes told Copilot Mauricio Klotz in Spanish, "Advise him we are emergency." A few seconds later, he asked, "Did you tell him?"

Klotz, in the same calm, almost nonchalant voice he used throughout a night of deepening peril, replied, "Yes sir, I already advise him," according to the official transcript of the National Transportation Safety Board.