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Accidents and Incidents
Learning from History

Contents

Termination of Hijack
Ethiopian 961

Captain Leul, F/O Yonas n.b. 
Comoros Islands, 1997.

Following hijack induced fuel exhaustion, the crew made a dead stick landing without hydraulics and without flaps.  The plane flipped after the left wing touched a wave. However 46 Passengers and 4 crew survived, including both pilots and two Flight Attendants who were known to be Christians ~ they were people of prayer who were committed to their passengers and colleagues throughout this ordeal.  Both pilots survived and returned to work soon after the accident.

"It was an amazing feat of courage and brilliant airmanship that saved many lives" - Commendation by Capt Clive Elton, Past Master of GAPAN.

They had also spoken to Alaska Airlines maintenance personnel in Seattle and Los Angeles about solving the problem. The final transmission from the MD-83 was about four minutes before impact, a simple acknowledgement of an altitude clearance from air traffic control and a request for another one.

Click here for more info on the accident.

Ditched B707

A damaged B707 sitting sadly in the water short of the runway at Mwanza, a small port city on Lake Victoria in north western Tanzania (Feb 2000). Apparently, after two unsuccessful approaches at night, the pilot of the Arabian-registered cargo plane came in low and was duly warned by the tower. The captain replied that he knew what he was doing - and then proceeded to hit the water a couple of miles short of the runway. The impact tore off all four engines and the landing gear, but the fuselage was unpunctured and the crew - with no injuries - was picked up by a fishing boat, and the remains of the plane were towed closer to shore. Ironically, the plane was supposed to pick up a load of fish!

Mid Air - PSA 182
San Diego circuit area

The lower image is a real time photo of PSA Flight 182 on 25th Sept 1978, following a mid air collision with a Cessna 172 in the circuit area at San Diego. 144 people died, five minutes before a normal landing was expected. Here are key extracts from the final transcript of the voice recorder (F/O flying, Captain on radio)...

For the full story read "Air Disaster" Volume 2 by Macarthur Job. Published by Aerospace Publications, Australia, March 1996.

Uncontained Engine Fire

This report provides some insight into the experience...

"We've leased them a 747SP which they are using between Maputo and Lisbon (full to overflowing every flight. The war torn city is slowly reviving itself from the ashes. A couple weeks ago I was bringing it back from Maputo to Johannesburg with both the first officer and Flight Engineer under training. When passing FL 060 the #3 motor literally blew up with huge yaw and vibration. No.3 thrust lever slammed shut and I got to the Cut-Off lever a nano second later… thinking it was in reverse. That was closely followed by the fire bell. The F/E froze on his recalls, and by the look on his face I could see he couldn't believe what was happening. It took three times to get him to pull the fire handle.

It was then that a dead heading Captain in the back raced forward, face pale as snow, shouting there was a raging fire consuming the wing. We had already fired both bottles! One bottle showed it had gone, the 2nd did not.

There was only one option left, I rolled her into a steep diving turn, had a squint at No.4 and took Max Continuous power, while heading back to the field as fast as possible still trying to extinguish the fire. At 340kts it went out… then it was fun trying to slow down for the field, which was almost below us by now. A couple hammerheads, speedbrake with flap plus gear - and we went straight in. We did a short landing and took the first exit and stopped. There were still clouds of smoke but no fire.

Note: any story corrections or updates would be valued.

Engine Anti-Ice left Off

On January 13th 1982 Air Florida Flight 90 took off from Washington National airport runway 36. The temperature was -5 deg C, the wind northeast at 10 kts and the cloud base 400 feet with a visibility of 700 to 1500 metres in blowing snow. The aircraft took off with the engine anti-ice inadvertantly left off. Engine thrust was degraded to a level inadequate to maintian flight. The aircraft crashed into the frozen Potomac river seconds after takeoff.

Above is a depiction of the accident
followed by an actual rescue photograph.

One of the six survivors of the crash forfeited his own life to ensure others were rescued. When the helicopter first dropped a line to him, he placed it around one of the women in the water so that she could be dragged to safety. And each time the line was dropped back to him, he passed it to another. After the other five survivors, three women and two men, had been plucked from the icy river, the helicopter returned to pick him up. But it was too late - finally overcome by the intense cold he had disappeared. The helicopter crew went on circling for some time looking for him, but without success.

Credit: "Air Disaster" by Mac Job, Volume 2.

Near miss observed by F/A in Australia... click here to go to the Chief pilot and flight Attendant's account.

Brief Summaries

B767 looses all EFIS and Flaps

AN ALMOST TOTAL failure of a Boeing 767’s electronic flight instrument system (EFIS) during a transatlantic flight has been attributed to battery installation faults, according to a US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report.

The 28 May, 1996, Martinair Holland 767-300ER flight from Amsterdam Schiphol to Orlando, Florida, was forced to divert to Boston, Massachusetts, with the crew flying manually and using only standby flight instruments (Flight International, 5-11 June 1996, P8). During the flapless landing, the ground spoilers and thrust reversers did not work, four tyres burst and there was a brake fire, but there were no injuries among the 202 people on board.

Tests at Boeing’s Seattle plant, where the aircraft was ferried for investigation, indicated that the EFIS was fully serviceable, and Boeing could not replicate the EFIS failure symptoms.

The problems started with the EFIS clocks, which needed resetting before departure. Early in the flight, warning lights illuminated then extinguished, there were uncommanded autopilot disconnects and changes in aircraft zero fuel weight as shown on the control and display unit. Approaching the USAs east coast, the NTSB report says, the display anomalies increased in frequency and duration.

Finally, the captain lost his navigation display and there were frequent losses of the co-pilot’s electronic attitude director indicator and electronic horizontal situation indicator. At the same time the engine indicating and crew alerting system screen "...was filled with caution and advisory messages. Upon deploying flaps to position 1, there was an indicated flap asymmetry, so the crew decided to proceed with a flapless landing.

Boeing and the NTSB attributed the in-flight faults to a main battery negative cable which was insecurely attached because of a stripped nut, and a battery shunt which was not fitted to specification. Boeing’s database showed two battery shunt problems with other Martinair 767s, but none with any other operator, the NTSB report says.

David Learmount/London - Flight International 18-14 Nov 1998

B-1B Crash blamed on a short circuit -
shutting down all 4 engines
The Feb. 1998 crash of a USAF B-1B Lancer near Marion, Ky. resulted from a short circuit that shut down all four engines during a low-level training mission, the Air Force said last week.  While executing the engine shutdown checklist to secure number three, a short circuit occurred in the Fire Warning Extinguisher Panel resulting in an uncommanded shutdown of the remaining three engines.  All four crewmembers safely ejected; the Bone was destroyed on impact.

 

 

Misloading cited in "Fine Air" crash
The NTSB last week made it official: misloading of a cargo of denim led to the crash of a Fine Air DC-8 on takeoff last August (1988) from Miami International Airport, killing all four aboard the freighter and at least one individual on the ground. According to the NTSB, the misloading resulted in a "more aft Centre of gravity and a correspondingly incorrect stabiliser trim setting that precipitated an extreme pitch-up" at rotation - AVweb.

Nader Sues FAA Over 777 Virtual Evac Tests
The FAA's decided to forego full-scale passenger evacuation testing prior to certifying Boeing's 777-300, a growth version of the big twin.  Not so fast, says the Aviation Consumer Action Project, one of consumerist Ralph Nader's organizations.   The group is suing the FAA over the  approval, saying that the only way to determine if any problems really exist is to perform the evacuation - AVweb.

 

 

FAA ATC Black Holes

IN THE SKY ABOVE BOSTON, IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S... At some point last week, controllers at Boston Center in Nashua, N.H., likely weren't quite sure what it was after a center computer failed. The computer blackout hit in the early evening last Wednesday and for 37 excruciatingly long minutes, some 75 controllers lost the data blocks that give them aircraft ID, altitude, speed, route and destination.  All that the blips on their radar screens showed were that there were planes in the air.  "It was chaos," William Johannes, local president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told the Boston Globe. "We had no idea where some of the planes were."

...SAFETY WASN'T COMPROMISED, SAYS FAA (SURPRISE!) We bet they say that to all the girls.  Well, even if safety wasn't compromised, schedules were as controllers at other Centers were told not to release planes into Boston Center's 160,000 square miles of airspace.  As if that wasn't enough to give harried controllers a Maalox moment, the screens went momentarily blank several times on Thursday, as well.  NATCA's Johannes says the problem is a common one, with more than 100 failures of the archaic computer gear at Boston Center logged this year alone.  "It's like a Chevy with 485,000 miles on it and you are trying to stretch it," he said.  "The longer it goes, the more times we are going to have failures."
...Credit to AvWeb, August 1998.