9 ms·

The Crash of United Flight 232 (2017)

168 points by mighty-fine 7y ago

TCR19 7y ago
I'd never read about this flight before. Thanks for the share. Tragic about the loss of life.
- projectileboy 7y ago
  I was a senior in high school in a suburb outside Minneapolis, and I remember it very well. What was so heartbreaking is that it looked like they were going to be fine, right up until the very end when the right wingtip went down, dug in and they started cartwheeling. After seeing that, I was amazed that anyone survived.
js2 7y ago
Al Haynes passed away last week: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-from-miraculous-1989-crash-landing-has-died https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-fro... This talk by him is well worth reading: http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html (The talk used to be available on YouTube, but was removed sometime in the last year by copyright claim. I can't find an alternate source for it. The video was at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic) Denny Fitch passed away in 2012: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/05/10/152402632/hero-pilot-in-1989-united-crash-dies https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/05/10/152402632... Fitch was interviewed by Errol Morris in an episode of "First Person" called "Leaving the Earth." It's still on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI Wikipedia page on the crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
- samoa42 7y ago
  also this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8 (was on hn a few weeks ago)
- mlyle 7y ago
  It's such an inspirational story to read about, even though a lot of people died. This was one of the strongest proof points that crew resource management really worked. It was the final nail in the coffin for forces that resisted or only reluctantly adopted CRM. It's clear that it took a whole lot of teamwork to get that plane down. Aviation is much safer than it was in the 80's, and the lessons learned from relative successes like the Sioux City crash can be thanked for it.
- BostonEnginerd 7y ago
  It's a real shame the talk was taken down. I really enjoyed watching that lecture a few years ago.
vermontdevil 7y ago
Here’s a computer simulation showing everything behind this crash landing https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww
mr_sam-v 7y ago
Damn I never heard of this and ngl that's pretty dramatically amazing
eternalny1 7y ago
I heard Al Haynes speak in a small group setting regarding this incident when I was in aviation college. The amount of composure they had to maintain to even get this aircraft near an airport was unbelievable.
- js2 7y ago
  Between the four pilots they had nearly 90,000 hours of flight time. Haynes had 30,000, of which ~7,200 where on type. Records had 20,000, Dvorak 15,000 and Fitch had 23,000. Fitch had amazingly practiced flying in a simulator with throttles-only after hearing about JAL 123. If any crew was going to land this plane, it was this one.
  - dclowd9901 7y ago
    Amazing how that turns out. Like when Sulley had to ditch that flight into the Hudson, and just so happened to be an instructor of water landings. What are the odds?
    - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
      I love this quote by Sully after the incident: "One way of looking at this might be that, for 42 years, I've been making small regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training," said US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. "And on January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." Absolute legend.
    - libria 7y ago
      Could be some survivor bias here. One 747 Max happened to have a jumpseat pilot who knew how to fix the MCAS issue and the plane flew on without issue and thus without much media coverage. [1] Presumably, 2 other 747 Max's didn't have enough SME's on board to save them and crashed. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-and-boeing-737-max/585301/ https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-an...
      - 7y ago
kashprime 7y ago
I wonder if the same McDonnell Douglas corporate culture behind the flawed DC 10 is what led to the MAX? It's often said Boeing's acquisition of Douglas was more of a reverse takeover. On a side note, I once met an aircraft investigator who called it the Death Cruiser 10, and that it put his kids through college!
jonas21 7y ago
With all the attention given to the 737 MAX lately, it's easy to forget that airline travel is dramatically safer today than it was just 30 years ago when this incident took place. Fatalities per revenue passenger-mile have decreased by a factor of 15x from 1989 to 2018 (and 54x from 1970 to 2018) [1]. [1] https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety-evolution-2018-update/ https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety-evolu...
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Now assume Boeing and the FAA did their jobs and re-calculate.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    So things get better over time but instead of recognizing the advances made, you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have been better?
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Is today national strawmen day or did I miss a memo or something?
    - CaptainZapp 7y ago
      Well, you can chalk the first 737 MAX crash up to greed, hubris, bad design decisions and a generally rotten culture in a once great, engineering driven company. Not grounding the plane after that, despite the fact that Boeing must have had the knowledge of what have gone on is corporate mass murder for profit. you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have been better? Yes, it would definitely had been better if 346 people wouldn't have been killed by a greedy corporate behemoth, which very obviously cares much more about profits than about the people they killed. This point is pretty obvious when you listen to their mealy mouthed pr bullshit. I trust this answers your question.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    Remember that the failure we complain about on the 'MAX was an effort to improve margin on the design (to make over-rotation and nose rising on climb a lot less sporty on a heavier aircraft)... that was completely screwed up by both Boeing and regulators. Mistakes will be made; automation in the name of safety has killed people and will continue to kill people. But overall automation and resource management in the cockpit have conspired to make aviation incredibly safe compared to the past.
Sharlin 7y ago
This is one of those classic aviation tales I'm never not going to re-read when they pop up, right there with the Gimli Glider [1] and the various SR-71 stories. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
- isostatic 7y ago
  For me it’s BA9 that piques my amazement “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress” And for absurdity the one where the pilot was sucked out of the window and the cabin crew had to hold on to him https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
refurb 7y ago
Interesting random fact about this crash. On board was a man by the name of John Stille. He had invented a very versatile carbon-carbon bond formation that bears his name “the Stille reaction”. His work eventually resulted in a Nobel prize for the scientists who built upon it. He didn’t survive the crash. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Stille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Stille
davidf18 7y ago
"When the plane pancaked onto the runway, more than 10,000 pounds of kerosene came out all at once from the ruptured right wing and turned to mist." I wonder why they didn't "dump the fuel" just before the crash to have avoided the fire. I thought this was standard operating procedure to dump fuel before crash landings. I had read about the crash awhile ago and as I recall many people that died died of smoke inhalation from the fire and not the impact itself.
- pdonis 7y ago
  Dumping fuel requires good control of the aircraft, which they didn't have. Plus it would have added more workload to a flight crew already overloaded. On balance trying to do it might have led to missing the landing altogether and everybody aboard being killed.
- roelschroeven 7y ago
  Good question. Maybe they were too busy flying the airplane and could divert attention to dumping the fuel? Or maybe they need hydraulics to dump the fuel?
- roelschroeven 7y ago
  Apparently they did dump some of the fuel: "While dumping some of the excess fuel, ..." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Crash_landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Cra...) Possibly the pilots were reluctant to dump too much fuel, since the two remaining engines were their only method of steering the plane. A lack of fuel was the last thing they needed.
  - rconti 7y ago
    Interesting. Or perhaps it would create more balance issues. Regardless, it sounds like it was considered by someone with more experience flying airliners than myself.
jacquesm 7y ago
111 people died on that flight according to Wikipedia, more amazingly, 185 survived.
joncrane 7y ago
I notice that the flight instructor disobeys the captain, who says to says to remove power from the engines, and does the opposite right as they're touching down. Was there ever any thought as to whether that contributed to the loss of life?
- agurk 7y ago
  I read the wiki article[0] about this after reading the article and found it a lot more informative. It says just before touchdown "Fitch noticed the high sink rate and that the plane started to yaw right again, and pushed the throttles to full power in an attempt to mitigate the high sink rate and level the plane". It seems a more complex situation than him just deciding to apply power to the engines as the right wing would likely have made contact with the ground anyway. I wasn't able to find any speculation if Fitch could have acted differently and had a better outcome in the official report[1]. The report states that the "captain's acceptance of the check airman to assist in the cockpit was positive and appropriate". Regarding disobeying the captain we can see from transcripts from the CVR that the captain (probably) knew what Fitch was doing: Records: "Close 'em off." Haynes: "Left turn." Records: "Pull 'em off" Fitch: "Nah, I can't pull 'em off or we'll lose it, that's what's turning ya." Unidentified: "Okay." Fitch: "Back ya’ll!" Haynes: "Left, Left throttle, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left!" Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS): "Whoop whoop pull up. Whoop whoop pull up. Whoop whoop pull up." Haynes: "Everybody stay in brace!" GPWS: "Whoop whoop pull up." Haynes: "God!" [Sound of impact, end of recording] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 [1] https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR-90-06.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... (Discussion of the performance of the flight crew from page 75 [81] onwards)
- bdamm 7y ago
  No. It's remarkable that they even got to the runway with such precision.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  Presumably using only one engine would have prevented the plane from flipping like it did, but it might have smashed into the ground harder or turned into a fireball. Ultimately it is impossible to say what kind of effect it would have had, though I’m inclined to say it would likely have been better if the thrust was applied equally.
scoot 7y ago
"A fireball and smoke rose from the middle portion of the plane as banks of seats began vaulting and somersaulting high above the flames. Some of the banks of seats were thrown far above the fuselage in great parabolas, shot as if from a cannon by the centrifugal force of the aft end of the fuselage swinging in its majestic, flaming arc. What must it have been like to take that ride, alive, aloft, alone, aware, unhurt as yet, and looking down on the green earth?" Holy shit.
- onychomys 7y ago
  If there's any mercy in the universe, they would have been unconscious from the g-forces.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pablobaz 7y ago
This book about the incident is a great read. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster-Survival/dp/0393240029 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster-Survival/... It goes into detail about the causes of the crash, the stories of the passengers before and after the crash.
FabHK 7y ago
Would ditching (assuming there was a large body of water near) or landing in a huge cornfield (like Ural Airlines 178 out of ZIA (Moscow-Zhukovsky)) have made it better or worse?
- dralley 7y ago
  Disclaimer: this is total speculation from someone completely unqualified to speculate about aviation Given the violence of the crash due to the total lack of fine control, likely worse. A fire in the cornfield could have killed many more people as would the lack of emergency firefighting and medical attention. A plane that broke apart in the water would likely just lead to most passengers quickly drowning. It might work if the plane remained intact, but that requires landing level and slow, something they had no ability to control.
furgooswft13 7y ago
Air Crash Investigation/Mayday does a pretty good dramatization of this flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-YcwWBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-YcwWBc A similar incident took place in 2003 on a DHL cargo plane after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Miraculously they did manage to land the plane intact despite the total loss of hydraulics and needing to rely on engine thrust alone to control the plane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho... The Mayday episode might also mention (least from my memory of last watching it) an experimental NASA program developed sometime after this crash that would allow "full airplane control" via computer in the event one more more control surfaces could not be used. It achieved this by translating normal flight inputs into sophisticated throttle manipulation of the engines, just like the pilots on flight 232 did, but with the reflexes and modeling of a computer. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf
matt-attack 7y ago
One thing I never understood as a kid, was why wasn't there better footage of a crash. Many people at the airport knew the plane was coming in, and they had plenty of time. Yes this wasn't 2019 where everyone has a camera in their pocket, but nonetheless I always thought the could have done better than the crazy shot through the chain-link fence.
- steelframe 7y ago
  It seems to me the reason is simply that it wasn't anyone's job to make sure there was really great footage of the crash. Everyone was too busy preparing to respond to an imminent disaster in which nearly 300 lives were, in all probability, about to be lost. "Hey Bob, you have that VHS recorder stowed away somewhere in the locker room, don't you? This guy on something called a website 30 years in the future is going to really wish that we got great footage of a horrible crash in which dozens of people die. Why don't you run out a little closer to the airstrip where a nearly completely out-of-control airplane flying at an insane speed is about to slam into the ground? Future spectators will really appreciate it."
  - matt-attack 7y ago
    I'd image it would have provided more than just lulz. It'd think a video like that would be of enormous engineering value in crash-dynamics.
    - dev_tty01 7y ago
      They may have felt it would be too disrespectful to film the death of so many people.
- bdash 7y ago
  From the talk by Captain Al Haynes (http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html): > We only gave them two minutes to line up for runway 22. They were all set up for runway 31. And when I told Kevin we saw this runway ahead of us, and that's where we were going to land, he had two minutes to get the equipment off the runway. They were actually positioned on that runway, and we could see them moving off that runway. That's the reason the video is no better than it was. With all the notice we had, everyone was set up for runway 31. The two hangars that are built right off to the left of runway 22 were built after the airport was closed, and you can't see the runway from the tower. And that's where the operator was. So he went clearing down the steps, and if you've ever tried to get down tower steps in a hurry, it's a long way down, and that's as far as he could get, before we got there.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
It was a grim situation, but I don't think the end of the article does justice to the fact that nearly two-thirds of the passengers survived what by all rights should have been completely unsurvivable, thanks to the sterling performance of the flight crew and the flight instructor, as well as the flight attendants for keeping everyone calm and prepared, and the control tower personnel for getting a prodigious amount of local firefighters and EMTs on the scene before the plane arrived. It was, as Wikipedia dryly puts it, "a prime example of successful crew resource management," and had a big influence on training practices as airlines sought to replicate that professionalism. United Flight 232 was an engineering disaster, but a piloting miracle.
DataJunkie 7y ago
IIRC, several policy changes resulted from this crash: - Pathway lighting for exits - Reminding passengers that the nearest exit may be behind you (not all airlines remind you) - Changes in how lap children are dealt with during an emergency.
RichardCA 7y ago
Not sure if anyone's posted this yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ
furioushatter 7y ago
so back in the day we had to watch film footage of this as part of the training for working on Boeing aircraft electrical wirings.
mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
Did the kids without seatbelts all die? I can't imagine what I would do as a parent of one of those babies if I were told to put them on the ground. Like... Hell no!
DrScump 7y ago
Note that this article is from 2017, but the crash-landing was in 1989.
jrnichols 7y ago
I also remember something about Sioux City itself - the hospital was at shift change, so they were able to have just about 2x the normal amount of staff available. They had enough advance warning and were able to start getting more fire/EMS resources heading that way as well.

168 points by mighty-fine 7y ago

TCR19 7y ago

I'd never read about this flight before. Thanks for the share. Tragic about the loss of life.

projectileboy 7y ago
I was a senior in high school in a suburb outside Minneapolis, and I remember it very well. What was so heartbreaking is that it looked like they were going to be fine, right up until the very end when the right wingtip went down, dug in and they started cartwheeling. After seeing that, I was amazed that anyone survived.

js2 7y ago

Al Haynes passed away last week: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-from-miraculous-1989-crash-landing-has-died https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-fro... This talk by him is well worth reading: http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html (The talk used to be available on YouTube, but was removed sometime in the last year by copyright claim. I can't find an alternate source for it. The video was at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic) Denny Fitch passed away in 2012: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/05/10/152402632/hero-pilot-in-1989-united-crash-dies https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/05/10/152402632... Fitch was interviewed by Errol Morris in an episode of "First Person" called "Leaving the Earth." It's still on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI Wikipedia page on the crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

samoa42 7y ago
also this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8 (was on hn a few weeks ago)
mlyle 7y ago
It's such an inspirational story to read about, even though a lot of people died. This was one of the strongest proof points that crew resource management really worked. It was the final nail in the coffin for forces that resisted or only reluctantly adopted CRM. It's clear that it took a whole lot of teamwork to get that plane down. Aviation is much safer than it was in the 80's, and the lessons learned from relative successes like the Sioux City crash can be thanked for it.
BostonEnginerd 7y ago
It's a real shame the talk was taken down. I really enjoyed watching that lecture a few years ago.

vermontdevil 7y ago

Here’s a computer simulation showing everything behind this crash landing https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww

mr_sam-v 7y ago

Damn I never heard of this and ngl that's pretty dramatically amazing

eternalny1 7y ago

I heard Al Haynes speak in a small group setting regarding this incident when I was in aviation college. The amount of composure they had to maintain to even get this aircraft near an airport was unbelievable.

js2 7y ago
Between the four pilots they had nearly 90,000 hours of flight time. Haynes had 30,000, of which ~7,200 where on type. Records had 20,000, Dvorak 15,000 and Fitch had 23,000. Fitch had amazingly practiced flying in a simulator with throttles-only after hearing about JAL 123. If any crew was going to land this plane, it was this one.
- dclowd9901 7y ago
  Amazing how that turns out. Like when Sulley had to ditch that flight into the Hudson, and just so happened to be an instructor of water landings. What are the odds?
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    I love this quote by Sully after the incident: "One way of looking at this might be that, for 42 years, I've been making small regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training," said US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. "And on January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal." Absolute legend.
  - libria 7y ago
    Could be some survivor bias here. One 747 Max happened to have a jumpseat pilot who knew how to fix the MCAS issue and the plane flew on without issue and thus without much media coverage. [1] Presumably, 2 other 747 Max's didn't have enough SME's on board to save them and crashed. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-and-boeing-737-max/585301/ https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-an...
    - 7y ago

kashprime 7y ago

I wonder if the same McDonnell Douglas corporate culture behind the flawed DC 10 is what led to the MAX? It's often said Boeing's acquisition of Douglas was more of a reverse takeover. On a side note, I once met an aircraft investigator who called it the Death Cruiser 10, and that it put his kids through college!

jonas21 7y ago

With all the attention given to the 737 MAX lately, it's easy to forget that airline travel is dramatically safer today than it was just 30 years ago when this incident took place. Fatalities per revenue passenger-mile have decreased by a factor of 15x from 1989 to 2018 (and 54x from 1970 to 2018) [1]. [1] https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety-evolution-2018-update/ https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety-evolu...

jacquesm 7y ago
Now assume Boeing and the FAA did their jobs and re-calculate.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  So things get better over time but instead of recognizing the advances made, you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have been better?
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Is today national strawmen day or did I miss a memo or something?
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    Well, you can chalk the first 737 MAX crash up to greed, hubris, bad design decisions and a generally rotten culture in a once great, engineering driven company. Not grounding the plane after that, despite the fact that Boeing must have had the knowledge of what have gone on is corporate mass murder for profit. you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have been better? Yes, it would definitely had been better if 346 people wouldn't have been killed by a greedy corporate behemoth, which very obviously cares much more about profits than about the people they killed. This point is pretty obvious when you listen to their mealy mouthed pr bullshit. I trust this answers your question.
- mlyle 7y ago
  Remember that the failure we complain about on the 'MAX was an effort to improve margin on the design (to make over-rotation and nose rising on climb a lot less sporty on a heavier aircraft)... that was completely screwed up by both Boeing and regulators. Mistakes will be made; automation in the name of safety has killed people and will continue to kill people. But overall automation and resource management in the cockpit have conspired to make aviation incredibly safe compared to the past.

Sharlin 7y ago

This is one of those classic aviation tales I'm never not going to re-read when they pop up, right there with the Gimli Glider [1] and the various SR-71 stories. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

isostatic 7y ago
For me it’s BA9 that piques my amazement “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress” And for absurdity the one where the pilot was sucked out of the window and the cabin crew had to hold on to him https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9

refurb 7y ago

Interesting random fact about this crash. On board was a man by the name of John Stille. He had invented a very versatile carbon-carbon bond formation that bears his name “the Stille reaction”. His work eventually resulted in a Nobel prize for the scientists who built upon it. He didn’t survive the crash. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Stille https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Stille

davidf18 7y ago

"When the plane pancaked onto the runway, more than 10,000 pounds of kerosene came out all at once from the ruptured right wing and turned to mist." I wonder why they didn't "dump the fuel" just before the crash to have avoided the fire. I thought this was standard operating procedure to dump fuel before crash landings. I had read about the crash awhile ago and as I recall many people that died died of smoke inhalation from the fire and not the impact itself.

pdonis 7y ago
Dumping fuel requires good control of the aircraft, which they didn't have. Plus it would have added more workload to a flight crew already overloaded. On balance trying to do it might have led to missing the landing altogether and everybody aboard being killed.
roelschroeven 7y ago
Good question. Maybe they were too busy flying the airplane and could divert attention to dumping the fuel? Or maybe they need hydraulics to dump the fuel?
roelschroeven 7y ago
Apparently they did dump some of the fuel: "While dumping some of the excess fuel, ..." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Crash_landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Cra...) Possibly the pilots were reluctant to dump too much fuel, since the two remaining engines were their only method of steering the plane. A lack of fuel was the last thing they needed.
- rconti 7y ago
  Interesting. Or perhaps it would create more balance issues. Regardless, it sounds like it was considered by someone with more experience flying airliners than myself.

jacquesm 7y ago

111 people died on that flight according to Wikipedia, more amazingly, 185 survived.

joncrane 7y ago

I notice that the flight instructor disobeys the captain, who says to says to remove power from the engines, and does the opposite right as they're touching down. Was there ever any thought as to whether that contributed to the loss of life?

agurk 7y ago
I read the wiki article[0] about this after reading the article and found it a lot more informative. It says just before touchdown "Fitch noticed the high sink rate and that the plane started to yaw right again, and pushed the throttles to full power in an attempt to mitigate the high sink rate and level the plane". It seems a more complex situation than him just deciding to apply power to the engines as the right wing would likely have made contact with the ground anyway. I wasn't able to find any speculation if Fitch could have acted differently and had a better outcome in the official report[1]. The report states that the "captain's acceptance of the check airman to assist in the cockpit was positive and appropriate". Regarding disobeying the captain we can see from transcripts from the CVR that the captain (probably) knew what Fitch was doing: Records: "Close 'em off." Haynes: "Left turn." Records: "Pull 'em off" Fitch: "Nah, I can't pull 'em off or we'll lose it, that's what's turning ya." Unidentified: "Okay." Fitch: "Back ya’ll!" Haynes: "Left, Left throttle, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left!" Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS): "Whoop whoop pull up. Whoop whoop pull up. Whoop whoop pull up." Haynes: "Everybody stay in brace!" GPWS: "Whoop whoop pull up." Haynes: "God!" [Sound of impact, end of recording] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 [1] https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR-90-06.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... (Discussion of the performance of the flight crew from page 75 [81] onwards)
bdamm 7y ago
No. It's remarkable that they even got to the runway with such precision.
Aeolun 7y ago
Presumably using only one engine would have prevented the plane from flipping like it did, but it might have smashed into the ground harder or turned into a fireball. Ultimately it is impossible to say what kind of effect it would have had, though I’m inclined to say it would likely have been better if the thrust was applied equally.

scoot 7y ago

"A fireball and smoke rose from the middle portion of the plane as banks of seats began vaulting and somersaulting high above the flames. Some of the banks of seats were thrown far above the fuselage in great parabolas, shot as if from a cannon by the centrifugal force of the aft end of the fuselage swinging in its majestic, flaming arc. What must it have been like to take that ride, alive, aloft, alone, aware, unhurt as yet, and looking down on the green earth?" Holy shit.

onychomys 7y ago
If there's any mercy in the universe, they would have been unconscious from the g-forces.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pablobaz 7y ago

This book about the incident is a great read. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster-Survival/dp/0393240029 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster-Survival/... It goes into detail about the causes of the crash, the stories of the passengers before and after the crash.

FabHK 7y ago

Would ditching (assuming there was a large body of water near) or landing in a huge cornfield (like Ural Airlines 178 out of ZIA (Moscow-Zhukovsky)) have made it better or worse?

dralley 7y ago
Disclaimer: this is total speculation from someone completely unqualified to speculate about aviation Given the violence of the crash due to the total lack of fine control, likely worse. A fire in the cornfield could have killed many more people as would the lack of emergency firefighting and medical attention. A plane that broke apart in the water would likely just lead to most passengers quickly drowning. It might work if the plane remained intact, but that requires landing level and slow, something they had no ability to control.

furgooswft13 7y ago

Air Crash Investigation/Mayday does a pretty good dramatization of this flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-YcwWBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-YcwWBc A similar incident took place in 2003 on a DHL cargo plane after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Miraculously they did manage to land the plane intact despite the total loss of hydraulics and needing to rely on engine thrust alone to control the plane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho... The Mayday episode might also mention (least from my memory of last watching it) an experimental NASA program developed sometime after this crash that would allow "full airplane control" via computer in the event one more more control surfaces could not be used. It achieved this by translating normal flight inputs into sophisticated throttle manipulation of the engines, just like the pilots on flight 232 did, but with the reflexes and modeling of a computer. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf

matt-attack 7y ago

One thing I never understood as a kid, was why wasn't there better footage of a crash. Many people at the airport knew the plane was coming in, and they had plenty of time. Yes this wasn't 2019 where everyone has a camera in their pocket, but nonetheless I always thought the could have done better than the crazy shot through the chain-link fence.

steelframe 7y ago
It seems to me the reason is simply that it wasn't anyone's job to make sure there was really great footage of the crash. Everyone was too busy preparing to respond to an imminent disaster in which nearly 300 lives were, in all probability, about to be lost. "Hey Bob, you have that VHS recorder stowed away somewhere in the locker room, don't you? This guy on something called a website 30 years in the future is going to really wish that we got great footage of a horrible crash in which dozens of people die. Why don't you run out a little closer to the airstrip where a nearly completely out-of-control airplane flying at an insane speed is about to slam into the ground? Future spectators will really appreciate it."
- matt-attack 7y ago
  I'd image it would have provided more than just lulz. It'd think a video like that would be of enormous engineering value in crash-dynamics.
  - dev_tty01 7y ago
    They may have felt it would be too disrespectful to film the death of so many people.
bdash 7y ago
From the talk by Captain Al Haynes (http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html): > We only gave them two minutes to line up for runway 22. They were all set up for runway 31. And when I told Kevin we saw this runway ahead of us, and that's where we were going to land, he had two minutes to get the equipment off the runway. They were actually positioned on that runway, and we could see them moving off that runway. That's the reason the video is no better than it was. With all the notice we had, everyone was set up for runway 31. The two hangars that are built right off to the left of runway 22 were built after the airport was closed, and you can't see the runway from the tower. And that's where the operator was. So he went clearing down the steps, and if you've ever tried to get down tower steps in a hurry, it's a long way down, and that's as far as he could get, before we got there.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

It was a grim situation, but I don't think the end of the article does justice to the fact that nearly two-thirds of the passengers survived what by all rights should have been completely unsurvivable, thanks to the sterling performance of the flight crew and the flight instructor, as well as the flight attendants for keeping everyone calm and prepared, and the control tower personnel for getting a prodigious amount of local firefighters and EMTs on the scene before the plane arrived. It was, as Wikipedia dryly puts it, "a prime example of successful crew resource management," and had a big influence on training practices as airlines sought to replicate that professionalism. United Flight 232 was an engineering disaster, but a piloting miracle.

DataJunkie 7y ago

IIRC, several policy changes resulted from this crash: - Pathway lighting for exits - Reminding passengers that the nearest exit may be behind you (not all airlines remind you) - Changes in how lap children are dealt with during an emergency.

RichardCA 7y ago

Not sure if anyone's posted this yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ

furioushatter 7y ago

so back in the day we had to watch film footage of this as part of the training for working on Boeing aircraft electrical wirings.

mrhappyunhappy 7y ago

Did the kids without seatbelts all die? I can't imagine what I would do as a parent of one of those babies if I were told to put them on the ground. Like... Hell no!

DrScump 7y ago

Note that this article is from 2017, but the crash-landing was in 1989.

jrnichols 7y ago

I also remember something about Sioux City itself - the hospital was at shift change, so they were able to have just about 2x the normal amount of staff available. They had enough advance warning and were able to start getting more fire/EMS resources heading that way as well.