“The Engine is GONE!!” The Incredible story of Nationwide 723

all multi-engine Pilots are trained to deal with the possible engine failure during the takeoff roll two pilots actually get to experience a real engine failure and even fewer will experience the insanity that these two pilots had to endure stay tuned [Music] around lunchtime on November 7 2007 a crew operating for Nationwide Airlines met up in the crew room at Cape Town International Airport in South Africa they had just enjoyed a nice night stop in Cape Town and were now rostered to operate together on a flight to Johannesburg with departure time 13 15 local time the crew consisted of four cabin crew and two pilots and the cabin crew were headed up by cabin controller Marilyn ring one of the most experienced cabin crew members in the airline this was a routine flight for her and she started up today by briefing her three colleagues like she always did the two pilots were going to fly together had very mixed experience levels in command of the flight was 50 year old Captain Trevor Arnold he was very experienced with 13 860 hours of Total time and close to 3 300 hours on the Boeing 737-200 that they were going to operate on this flight he had first started flying for Nationwide back in 1997 but had then been on a few years of a break flying for other operators until in 2006 he had come back again as a contrast his first officer was 25 year old Daniel Perry he was brand new on the job he had started flying for a nationwide only a month before the flight and had amassed just over 1 000 hours of Total time and 278 hours on the type which he had gotten his type rating on earlier that same year Captain Arnold was known as a very skilled Aviator and a stickler for following rules and standard operating procedures something that I'm guessing that first officer Perry was likely very happy about because generally the less experience you have the more important is that everyone follows procedures because that's really the only thing that you have to hold on to until your experience builds up in any case the pilot started by looking through their pre-flight briefing material and it looked quite okay the weather in Cape Town was quite miserable with light rain noddly winds and a low Cloud layer but the weather for the destination an alternate looked a bit better the aircraft they were going to fly was a Boeing 77 200 Advanced a true icon of the 737 family it was part of the very first variance of the 737 family called the originals but most of us we just refer to them as the jurassics when I joined my current Airline we were actually still operating the 200s and unfortunately I never had a chance to Pilot one myself but every one of my colleagues who did said that it handled just like a sport car it is a fantastic aircraft that has the dimensions that the 737 was supposed to have before it started to be stretched to accommodate more passengers this particular model the 737 200 Advanced first came out in 1971 and it was equipped with slightly more powerful Pratt and Whitney JTA Delta 15 engines improved aerodynamics out the brakes and a higher fuel capacity compared to the original 200 giving it the better range and overall efficiency the two Platinum Whitney engines were low bypass rates turbo fan engines making them very long and thin looking almost like cigars they were used because when Boeing were designing the original 737 they wanted an aircraft that would have a low ground clearance so that that could be easy to work on for ground handlers since Boeing assumed that it would mainly operate into smaller airports where the facilities might not be that great this meant that the engines were mounted directly onto the wing without any pylons and those engine mounts will play an important role in this story the engines were attached with two main mounts one forward and one aft and then a secondary support assembly forward of the AFT engine mount now the engine supports are bolted onto the wing using cone bolts which are constructed to hold up for any normal loads that the engine might experience but if a strong enough force is applied to them for example if a gear up Landing would happen the bolts were designed to Shear off and release the engines and ever protect the wing and overall airplane main structure it was extremely important that these bolts were mounted correctly with the exact amount of torque applied to them to avoid over stressing the bolts which could lead to metal fatigue this was a known issue especially on the older type of engine mounts that were fitted to this particular aircraft so the FAA had issued an airwardness directive several years earlier outlining strict inspection intervals to be done at least every 700 cycles of these mounts and bolts and this leads us to the airline in the story nationwide at the time of this accident Nationwide were operating 11 Boeing 77 200s and they were doing all of their maintenance in-house in their own maintenance organization but that organization had been experiencing some problems for the last few years prior to 2007. Key Management Personnel most often the quality manager had ended up quitting their jobs just prior to the renewal audits of the air maintenance organization or AMO approval and it wasn't that hard to see why because the audits always highlighted several non-compliances with existing rules and regulations and most of these findings were never properly addressed or closed which is why likely unbeknown to the pilot the Amo was actually lacking a former license to operate at the time of the accident the maintenance work had continued to be done based on on official emails and from the South African civil aviation authorities allowing them to continue for now but they really didn't exist any provisions for such an extension one of the findings that were later revealed was that the accident aircraft didn't have any records of any inspections of the engine mounts for the previous five years prior to the accident but like I said the pilots were happily unaware of this as they proceeded to brief their cabin crew and started preparing their aircraft for departure now just to put this into perspective as Pilots we have to trust that the maintenance organization is doing its job and the only thing that we can really do is to verify that all the documentation is available under all applicable certification dates are in date and obviously that the aircraft looks good during the walk around as the pilots were walking out of the aircraft Captain Arnold asked if the first officer wanted to be Pilot Flying for the flight up to Johannesburg now first officer Perry was happy to do so he loved flying the aircraft and was Keen to show his senior colleague what he could do and maybe also get some tips and tricks on how to improve he started setting the aircraft up for departure from Runway sir one in Cape Town and then proceeded to brief the captain on how he intended to fly it part of that briefing included a thorough emergency brief including actions to take as well as which route they would fly in case of an engine failure this is common practice and in most Airlines we also touch drill exactly what we will do in case of an engine failure on takeoff both in the Stop and in the goal scenario and this is something we normally do during the first flight of each day that's also what this crew did and by doing so this would have stayed fresh in their muscle memory and the thought was that this would hopefully speed up the no time available decision making in case an actual failure would occur and on this day that's going to turn out to be very important but before I tell you the full story of what happened there's this have you made your travel plans for this summer yet well if you have you've probably noticed that the prices on flights have gone way up me and Sandra definitely noticed that when we started booking our trip up to Sweden as we do every year and luckily there are a few hacks that you can use in order to find the best prices if you use today's sponsor 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remember nor would always have a full 30-day money-back guarantee so you're not risking anything now back to the video once the crew was finished and all checklists were complete Nationwide flight 723 requested pushback and startup and started taxiing out through the rain for takeoff Runway 01. there were a lot of inbound traffic at the time of their planned departure so the ground controller asked them to expedite their lineup and be ready for an immediate takeoff as soon as a landing crj from South Africa Express had cleared the runway in front of them this was read back by the crew who lined their Boeing 737 up with the center line and started spooling up their engines they knew that they had to react quickly and start rolling as soon as they received their takeoff clearance because there was another SAA aircraft on Final just four nautical miles behind them that's why as soon as the takeoff clearance was received first officer Perry Advanced the trust levels to the takeoff epr and the aircraft started accelerating down the runway once the take of trust had been set he removed his hand from the trust levers and the captain took over ready to take controls and reject if something were to happen but initially the takeoff proceeded completely normally Captain Arnold call out 80 knots to which first officer Perry responded check they were now in what we refer to as the high-speed regime of the takeoff from which they rejected takeoff is really only executed if an engine failure fire or a predictive windshield warning is heard or if the runway is blocked or the aircraft is unsafe or unable to fly the reason we reject only for those things above 18 notches because it's normally safer from that position to take the aircraft into the air and deal with whatever problem you might have when you're already airborne that will give you more time to think and troubleshoot and you will then have the full use of the whole runway for landing if you then decide to come back remember the aircraft would have used up quite a lot of Runway accelerating up to this point and the speed would also be relatively high so even though it would be of course completely possible to stop the aircraft safely all the way up to the decision speed of V1 it would likely be safer and better to just bring any minor problem into the air this is what we call being goal-minded and most Airlines have adopted this philosophy today in any case initially there were no indications of anything going wrong during this takeoff Captain called out V1 removed his hand and then rotate which prompted first officer Parry to start pulling back on his yoke and rotate his aircraft slowly with about three degrees per second to get the aircraft airborne but here something started to go very wrong out under the right wing of their aircraft what had happened was that the AFT cone bolt which was holding the engine in place had developed a small fatigue crack and during the rotation this crack suddenly gave way and the bolt fractured now in normal conditions the secondary engine support assembly is supposed to be able to hold the load if the AFT Mount fails but unfortunately this secondary support now also failed we will never really know what happened here because the secondary support was never found after the accident either it also broke from The Strain or as some newspapers reported after the accident it might not have been fitted at all after the last engine overhaul in any case the consequence of both of these supports failing was that there was now nothing holding the back part of the engine in place while it was still producing full takeoff Trust this basically transformed the four bed engine mount support into a pivot point around which the engine could move and the terrifying consequence of that was that the engine now started to swing violently forward and upwards since the trust levels were mechanically connected via a control wire to the engine this wire was now pulled back with the full force of the departing engine which caused the right engine trust lever in the cockpit to whisk backward and slam into the pedestal so hard that it left a deep indentation in it the other immediate consequence was that the right engine now suddenly started producing an upward thrust Vector on the right wing causing the aircraft to quickly roll to the left fortunately first of the Perry was quick to react and input it right aileron and left rather to keep the aircraft under control as it was slowly climbing away from the runway [Music] since this all happened after the aircraft had passed V1 the decision speed rejecting the takeoff was now not an option from this point it was all about keeping the aircraft flying and figuring out what was going on now the forward engine mount support could not handle the kind of forces it was now being subjected to the outboard cone bolt sheared off as it was designed to do but the inboard one didn't have time to do so which had the consequence that the engine now just tore off but was left of the mount the engine was now completely free and it tore off all of the hydraulic and fuel lines as it started its fall back down to watch the earth below and only leaving a gaping hole in the wing where it used to be mounted one terrified passenger who was seated next to the right wing had been able to see this whole thing unfold which in reality only took a few seconds now I can only imagine what this poor passenger must have been thinking as it saw the whole ride engine simply fall off the aircraft apparently though this passenger then turned around and told another passenger who was sitting next to him what he had seen and this passenger then just calmly said don't worry these aircraft can fly safely on one engine qualifying this passenger for the price of fellow passenger of the year in my opinion in the cockpit there was now complete Pandemonium the pilots had heard a huge bang as the engine separated and then a few seconds later a kind of strange tearing sound and a sudden jolt of bank this time to the right after that the aircraft finally started to handle more like the way that the pilots had been trained it would after a normal ending failure first officer continued to fly the aircraft and manage to get it slowly climb away from the runway as soon as they had a sustained positive climb rate the captain brought the land gear up and then started troubleshooting the issue the immediate indications they had available to them was the [ __ ] trust level zero or decreasing engine indications on engine number two plus a trust aversive warning on the same engine as well as low pressure warnings from the associated engine driven hydraulic pump all of this minus maybe the truss reversal indication where clear signs of some kind of engine failure on the number two engine but both Pilots were careful not to draw any quick conclusions at this point and that's because this failure had so far not acted like any other failure that they had ever seen or practiced in the simulator and they were both acutely aware of the misidentification that had happened to the pilots of British Midlands like 92 who offered similar strange indications had shot down the wrong engine back in 1989. these Pilots did not want to make that same mistake so as the aircraft had reached a couple of hundred feet and it was reasonably under control the captain started going through all of the indications and finally came to the conclusion that they had suffered some kind of severe damage to their number two engine first officer Perry who now needed to push substantial amounts of left Rudder to keep the aircraft going straight due to the asymmetric trust that was being produced from the left engine agreed to this diagnosis in case of a severe engine damage the Boeing 737 non-normal checklist contains something known as memory items these are items that the pilot needs to do from memory as quickly as they can due to the critical nature of those items in this case the first officer would have called for the memory items to be completed and the captain would then have called them out for confirmation before actually doing them to make sure that his first officer agreed with the actions he would have started with trust lever Andy number two confirmed close officer Perry would then looked down confirming that he was actually about to move the correct trust lever and then called confirmed and the captain would have closed it even though in this case the trust level was already very closed next game ending start lever ending number two confirm cut off confirmed cut off engine fire warning switch and the number two confirm pull confirmed pooled all of these memory items were designed to secure the engine down by shutting off the axis to fuel and hydraulic fluids to the damaged engine the last memory item was to rotate the Indian fire warning switch to release the fire extinguishers into the engine in case it was on fire but that was not the case here once the memory items were complete the rest of the checklist could wait until the aircraft was properly established above the minimum sector altitude this meant that the two pilots could now completely concentrate on just climbing and eventually accelerate to retract the flaps which they started doing above 1000 feet they then continued they climbed at three thousand feet where they eventually leveled off down on the airport several witnesses had seen something large fall from the aircraft as it departed and could now see how the aircraft was barely climbing crabbing almost 45 degrees to the left and leaving a trail of white smoke behind its right wing this smoke was in reality a mist of hydraulic fluid and fuel which was now being vented out into the air but weren't the memory items supposed to stop the fuel and hydraulics from reaching the engine well yes but in this case these lines have been ruptured inboard of the shot of valves that were designed to do this job so Fuel and hydraulic fluid was now gushing out from the supply lines and this would start to cause its own problems later on the controller in the tower had also seen what was happening to flight 723 and from where he was standing the flat climb trajectory of the aircraft looked almost negative so he pushed the crash alarm fully convinced that the aircraft was just about to crash on the far side of the runway and he wanted to immediately alert the firefighters about it simultaneously he also realized that there was another aircraft on short final which he had already cleared to land as the Nationwide aircraft was departing now he cooled this aircraft up and advised the crew of possible debris on the runway but curiously he didn't advise them to immediately go around this meant that this aircraft actually decided to continue its approach to a landing and after they had done so they reported back to the tower confirming that there were a lot of debris around the center line towards the last third of the runway in the cockpit of flight 723 Captain Arnold had heard this transmission which just further confirmed his assessment of what was going on he now declared a mayday mayday mayday and advised that they had lost Trust on one of their engines and were also experiencing hydraulic issues he told that traffic control that they would likely need to return straight back to the airport after they had completed their emergency checklist he also asked if it would be possible to clear the runway from those debris during the 15 to 20 minutes it would take them to get ready for approach luckily since the tower controller had pushed the crash alarm the firefighters and rescue Personnel were now already standing by at the edge of the runway together with all other available Personnel at the airport they now open to work with moving their rubble from the damaged aircraft to the side of the runway to make it usable for the incoming emergency landing a fantastic show of teamwork the airport also now closed for incoming traffic so all of the aircraft on approach were now diverted to George airport instead soon the only aircraft in the airspace was Nationwide flight 723 the cabin crew Purser Marilyn was now called in to the cockpit and Captain Arnold asked her if she could go down through the cabin and have a look to give the pilots a damage report she did so and after a while she came back and informed them that she had seen that parts of the right engine appeared to be missing in reality she actually knew that the whole engine was gone but she later said that she didn't want to worry the pilots too much now here comes a valuable lesson for any cabin crew or indeed passenger out there there's no such thing as too much information in a situation like this providing that the information is accurate it is much better for us Pilots to have as much additional information as possible in order to plan our course of action in this case though it wouldn't have made any difference Captain Arnold told her to return to start preparing the crew and passengers for an emergency landing back in Cape Town and he then made a PA to the passengers where he explained what was going on and the fact that they were returning now in case Pilots face a problem like this there are several emergency checklists that needs to be completed in this case the crew would have started with completing the engine fire severe damage or separation checklist which starts out with the memory items that we just discussed and then continues by in a systematic manner making sure that the aircraft is as safe as possible in this new configuration this includes things like setting up the air conditioning system to not use bleed air from the damaged engine starting up the Apu one crucially balancing the fuel as the fuel would only be used from one tank in this situation and that can lead to a substantial fuel imbalance between the left and the right wing which can come with handling issues now here comes a bit about trap in the 737-200 version of this checklist in the copies that I have found regarding this last step the checklist only says fuel balance whilst in the 737 NG version of the checklist which I am used to this point comes with a very strong condition which is if no fuel leak is suspected because in this case the crew had indeed noticed a substantial imbalance between the tanks but it was showing that the fuel in the right tank was much lower than in the left now if you think about it if only the left engine is working and therefore is feeding fuel only from the left tank that tank should be lower on fuel right if the right tank is lower than that a clear indication of a fuel leak and they should not have tried to balance the fuel because doing so would possibly mean transferring precious fuel out through a gaping hole on that side but that is unfortunately exactly what the crew now did which didn't really help the imbalance but it meant that they now suddenly had a lot less time available on top of this the hydraulic pressure was quickly dropping due to the leaking hydraulic lines which brought with it all sorts of other problems so the pilots really needed to get this aircraft down relatively quickly now Captain Arnold had seen how well his first officer was handling the aircraft but with such a serious failure and given the very limited experience that first officer Perry had he wanted to feel how the aircraft handled himself to assess the difficulty so once the main emergency checklists were complete he asked to take over the controls when the first officer then handed him the controls the aircraft immediately started yawing and pitching so he almost immediately gave back the controls of the first officer which is a great sign of humility and airmanship he would have likely gotten the hang of the handling of the aircraft quite quickly but his first officer had already flown the aircraft for around 19 minutes at this point and he was doing so really well so if something isn't broken don't fix it as they were busy doing this and running through procedures with no outside visual references a new controller voice came on to the frequency and called them up Nationwide 723 Cape Town approach both of the pilots were under a lot of pressure here and they were not amused about being interrupted so they responded something along the lineup go away we're busy but the controller came back again and very calmly said Nationwide 723 terrain ahead and then gave them a new heading to follow something that they very quickly adhere to the 737-200 does not have the enhanced ground proximity warning system that later versions of the 727 do instead it has a very basic system that uses radio altimeter combined with the aircraft's configuration to issue warnings the problem with that is that the terrain warnings might come very late as it's only really reactive and not predictive like later versions are this was likely a humbling reminder to the crew of just how easy it is to lose situational awareness when dealing with multiple failures like this and how important it is that all links in the aviation chain keeps working together for a safe outcome to be reached now to fly a single engine approach the crew would have used the one engine inoperative Landing checklist which told them to prepare for a flaps 15 Landing that meant that they would land with a higher speed than normal but also with less drag in case of a go around the higher speed also meant better aerodynamic efficiency from the rudder which was really needed due to the asymmetric trust that they were experiencing first officer Perry needed to use almost full left Rudder to keep the aircraft going straight at this point the Pilot's now completed an approach briefing and they would have discussed the possibility of a single engine go around even though they knew that they were losing fuel fast and still had hydraulic problems a go around would not have been great especially since they were also now getting weather reports indicating that visibility was getting worse with lower clouds drifting in from false Bay they continued to receive long wide vectors out of the bay and were finally lined up with the ILS approach they started configuring the aircraft with first flaps one then flaps five and as the speed start reducing first officer Perry felt that he needed to use even more left rather but he was still able to control the aircraft well the captain again took up the PA mic and explained to the passengers what would happen and he also told them to adapt the braze position before landing the ground crew had now managed to clear the runway from all of the debris in a record time of only 18 minutes so the aircraft was now clear to land 25 minutes after the engine had fallen off their aircraft natural wide flight 723 landed safely and smoothly back at the same Runway they had taken off from initially the pilots were a bit worried about how well their brakes would work given that they didn't know the extent of the hydraulic damage they had suffered but it turned out that they worked just fine as soon as the aircraft had slowed down to a safe speed the very quiet and somber mood in the passenger cabin changed into a roar of Applause and sharing from the passengers the aircraft was slowed down to taxes speed as the pilot stared it onto the smaller Crossing Runway 3-4 and then brought it to a full stop as soon as they had stopped they were approached by the fire and rescue vehicle so wanted to inspect the damage but since there was no fire or immediate risk to the passengers the crew decided not to evacuate and instead waited for some mobile steps to be brought out to the aircraft as they were waiting for this Captain Arnold went out into the cabin to see the damage with his own eyes and as soon as they opened the [ __ ] the door he was greeted by thundering Applause from the passengers when he eventually got back into the cockpit first officer Perry said that the captain had lost all color in his face remember this was the very first time that he had seen the real extent of the damage to his aircraft uh the engine is gone he said and Perry responded what do you mean gone which is a fair question to ask aircraft engines are not supposed to just suddenly disappear this very happy outcome was made possible due to an amazing display of airmanship skill and teamwork both by the pilots the cabin crew and air traffic control but also the workers on the ground who managed to clear the debris as quickly as they did the captain would later receive the Polaris award for Exceptional airmanship from the International Airline Pilot Association which I think that the first officer also deserved given how well he handled the emergency with such limited experience but in later interviews first officer Perry explained that he wasn't a member of yalpa when the accident happened and that Captain Arnold was the one who was in command the investigation into the accident very quickly highlighted the fact that the airline had been operating with a Fleet Service without a valid air maintenance organization permit at the time of the accident it also showed that previous maintenance records were either missing or very substandard this led to the grounding of the whole Nationwide Fleet and also searing recommendations to the South African civil aviation authorities and their lack of oversight of the company's maintenance organization it turns out that giving authorization to operate maintenance of airliners via email just wasn't good enough Nationwide Airlines were ultimately liquidated early in 2008 as a result of the grounding now I want to give a special thanks to Mark D young for an article on interviews that he did with the people involved in this accident this article which I will link to below here gave much more color to the story than the 20 pages long accident report did and unfortunately the cockpit voice recorder was overwritten by the time the investigator got access to it so all of the conversations in this video comes from those interviews now if you are a nervous flyer I hope you've had a chance to look at my new web app at app.mentropilot.com I have created this app especially for you guys and for people with a lot of questions about Aviation it is free to test out but I recommend anyone who regularly have questions about Aviation or feel nervous to become a premium member then you'll get access to loads of cool stuff like all of my accident videos ad free and in podcast format 360 videos of wind shears and a full 737 setup and much much more check out this video next and consider buying a t-shirt or becoming a patreon member it really helps the work that we do and remember any patreon member over the 10 per month level would get premium access to both my apps as an additional perk have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 995,880

Keywords: mentour pilot, trending, plane crash, nationwide, airlines, south africa, investigations, boeing 737-200, capetown, airport, movie, cinematic, incident

Id: i6kccBc-FBQ

Length: 31min 8sec (1868 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023