Air Collision Over The Grand Canyon | Mayday | On The Move

in 1956 jack parshall faces one of the most challenging air crash investigations of all time when you talk about an accident in the grand canyon you're talking about both hostile inaccessible remote and dangerous hot enough to melt aluminum this was the age in which accident investigation began to grow up now let's see what we got in the dc7 the world expects answers from parshall right there the consequences for getting it wrong in any respect could have tremendous negative ramifications for this fledgling industry parshal makes a frightening discovery about commercial aviation it isn't safe it's not a matter of the system being broken guys we don't have a system hey at los angeles international airport united airlines flight 718 is preparing to depart for chicago the dc-7 is the newest and fastest passenger plane in america the pride of the united fleet [Music] i'm sorry sir there's no smoking until after takeoff in 1956 airline travel is something few people have had a chance to experience there are only 117 commercial aircraft in the entire state of california the girls were off bound for new york they were walking on air even before they got on board flying had a panage about it now part of this was because it cost a lot and there was a level of exclusivity about it but there was also a level of civility about it expertly prepared and tastefully it was a special deal a dc-7 can carry almost 100 passengers non-stop from coast to coast it was no longer a situation where people said well you're going to go fly commercially uh you're putting your life on the line it was getting to be reliable it was getting to be if not ubiquitous and fairly common chicago for dinner gentlemen dinner can't come soon enough for me door closed and secure guys the dc-7 is powered by four huge engines each one has 18 cylinders the right 3350 turbo compound is a technical marvel but it demands a lot of attention good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome aboard united airlines 718. our captain today is bob shirley you're in good hands 48 year old captain bob shirley has more than 17 000 flight hours he's been on the plum la chicago route for nearly a year bob shirley was an excellent pilot clay lacy is a former united pilot who was with another crew flying out of los angeles that morning he was uh highly regarded as a pilot and he had his own airplane and the guy loved aviation twa is running a little late this morning huh the 36 year old first officer robert harms is a world war ii veteran and a former flight instructor well we're on time guys let's keep it that way i'm three pages into the checklist the third member of the united airlines cockpit crew is flight engineer gerard fiore engine number one rpm to 2100 the flight engineer was a busy fellow and he fine-tuned the power plants uh individually and even by cylinder checking magnetos left both right both rpm is good for left and right the proper heat mixture controls and uh cow flaps and so on and so forth to keep those power plants running uh at their best cylinder head temps are in the zone well dr fiore we are blessed this morning she's all yours cabin while the united crew waits to taxi the tower controller gives instructions to the plane ahead of them a twa flight to kansas city pwa2 cleared for takeoff on runway two five right roger copy cleared for takeoff too far [Music] right united flight 718 taxi to position and hold you are next on runway two five left united 718 copy taxi and hold runway two five left the united flight is right on time this morning keeping to schedule is important in the small but growing air travel business where many flights carry at least some first-time passengers as they kept adding flights passengers kept coming it was almost an if you schedule it they will come situation united flight 718 cleared for takeoff take off clearance and [Music] take off thrust 80 knots check 120 knots v1 rotate at 904 in the morning flight 718 lifts off from los angeles the trip to chicago should take about six hours captain shirley must follow an assigned corridor through the airspace around los angeles after that he's free to fly wherever he wants as long as he reports passing a series of waypoints along the route to chicago if you had to divert it was no real big deal we did not have the sophistication of the radar equipment we have today back in the 50s there was a big sky out there and that was kind of the way everybody thought of it there weren't that many airplanes up there can i offer you something to drink man the engines sound good mr fiori how are the temps hey old steady skipper still running a little rich we were variances in those days and policing the passengers oh time for some introductions knock yourself out good morning folks captain bob shirley here it is a beautiful bright day we're almost at our cruising altitude of 21 000 feet which is almost exactly four miles if only ten percent of the people have flown we were certainly trying to get more people to fly so i try to make it a fun uh interesting experience 54 minutes into the flight the dc-7 reaches its second waypoint united 718 we're at needles 958 21 000 feet clear skies course direct to durango estimate crossing the painted desert line at 10 31 10 31 the crew will next check in when they cross a point on the map known as the painted desert line i'll try to get you some spectacular views in the next half hour so let's take glue to those windows we're just crossing into arizona on the right you can see lake havasu now where we are it's about 10 below zero so don't go rolling down those windows now cruising at 21 000 feet the crew spots thunder clouds ahead and adjusts their course back in those days if we'd see a thunderstorm head or a line of thunderstorm we'd turn and try and go between two of the cells and uh without radar we didn't tell anybody it would just steer around folks we got a little weather so it could get a bit bumpy nothing to worry about just keep your eyes peeled and you'll get a spectacular view no matter where you're sitting how we doing on your side bob thunderhead five miles south we're clear of it damn shocked passengers have no idea what's gone wrong oh god dispatch to united 718 do you copy [Music] flight 718 is overdue to check in calls from dispatch go unanswered [Music] air traffic control headquarters in salt lake city see a salt lake controllers here don't normally communicate directly with flight crews they get flight information by phone from airline dispatchers who are in radio contact with their pilots at 10 51 they get a disturbing call from united airlines dispatch salt lake understand united 718 20 minutes overdue at painted desert moments later another dispatcher calls more disturbing news salt lake twa i'm getting no response from flight 2. understand twa flight 2 20 minutes overdue at painted desert we have had no contact here controllers now know that two planes flying from la have not reported crossing a scheduled waypoint the painted desert line united flight 718 and twa flight 2 to kansas city were both expected to reach that waypoint at 10 31. caa salt lake twa flight 2 do you copy in the absence of a radar beam hitting an airplane if the airplane disappears you're not going to know that anything is wrong until probably the second time that they fail to hit a reporting point they're supposed to get on the radio and report their position twa2 caa salt lake do you copy twa flight 2 is carrying 70 people there are another 58 aboard the united flight controllers and dispatchers can only wait for some response to learn their fate i had a trip that morning in a dc six from los angeles to denver we got over bryce canyon about the same time that air inc was calling united 718. ca salt lake do you copy maybe twice a minute they were trying to get a hold of and i remember slam who was bob shirley's boss uh he says ah that bob isn't listening to the radio you know more than an hour has passed since the planes were last due to check in controllers send out a bulletin asking local authorities to keep an eye out for the two missing planes painted desert that's where you expected to hear from at least one of those two airplanes when neither of them were heard from that's the time that the hair is going to begin to stand up on the back of the heads of the controllers [Music] two commercial airliners are still missing somewhere over the arizona desert finding an aircraft in those days before we had various locator beacons before we had the uh the radar systems that we have today indeed was looking for a needle in a haystack the next morning news comes from authorities in arizona confirming everyone's worst fears they found him [Music] the remains of two different planes have been spotted in arizona's grand canyon there was a gentleman named palin hudgins who was an air tour pilot who had heard that they were missing airplanes and he was flying along looking at anything he could see down there and he sees some smoke coming up from char butte the twisted wreckage of united 718 lies on a rocky ledge 210 meters up the sheer canyon wall the air tour pilot spots the second crash site on the floor of the canyon about two kilometers away he banks around comes in for closer look and there is the most distinctive structure in commercial aviation at the time the tail of a constellation with the three prongs there's just no mistaking that we had one aircraft up on a bluff we had pieces down in crevasses engines and parts lying in various places the immediate priority is to get rescuers into one of the least accessible places in north america when you talk about an accident in the grand canyon you're talking about both hostile inaccessible remote and dangerous richard rodriguez is a former investigator with the civil aeronautics board you're a thousand feet above riverbed for instance depending upon where you are so it's a very dangerous place to work when rescuers finally reach the crash area they first find the scattered remains of twa flight 2. reaching the wreckage of the other plane will be even more difficult these are mountaineers from denver's rocky mountain rescue club near the rim of the grand canyon gorge they collect their gear these mountaineers will attempt to scale the steep walls from the floor of the canyon in order to reach an abutment on which rest the shattered wreckage of the united airlines dc-7 it's not long before rescuers come to a grim conclusion everyone aboard both planes is dead it is now up to investigators from the civil aeronautics board to piece together what happened the grand canyon is a graveyard for 128 passengers and crew of two airliners which crashed on peaks little more than a mile apart the impact reduced the wreckage to carbonized smears of paint and metal none survived [Music] the sudden loss of two of america's most modern airplanes shocks a country that has come to think of air travel as luxurious and safe we were not familiar as a people with having massive tragedies like this and a huge body count especially in this fledgling thing called commercial aviation we were used to an airplane crashing every now and then it was a fairly common occurrence but not two very safe airliners [Music] air accident investigators are shuttled to the crash site by helicopter the investigator of course is driven by a desire to know what caused the accident for the simple reason that we want to prevent it from ever happening again the team's lead investigator is well suited for the job jack parshall is an aviation legend not only an experienced pilot but a crash survivor himself this was one of the pioneers this is a guy who's flown air mail he's done it all over the years and he's also had four crashes of his own you would want somebody exactly like this on the job of trying to piece together the dynamics of a crash as well as piece together the metal all right let's figure out what's what start mapping this up the pieces on the ground will tell parshal what happened in the air folks who got a little weather so it should get a bit bumpy how are we doing on your side bob thunderhead five miles south could a sudden thunderstorm have produced turbulence violent enough to knock both planes out of the sky damn jack parshall doesn't have any of the advanced technology or the considerable body of knowledge that modern day investigators have come to rely on it was night and day between the tools that the national transportation safety board has now and what they had then uh just it literally was a different world they had very little broken fragments of the plane and his own expertise are all he has to solve this mystery this is what's left of the cockpit there were no black boxes like there are today it really was by the seedier pants situation and in fact this was the age in which accident investigation began to grow up hard enough to melt aluminum at the twa crash site parshall finds evidence of an intense post-crash fire but that doesn't tell him what brought the plane down where's the connie's tail from here okay let's take a look investigators locate the constellation's distinctive triple tail about 500 meters from the rest of the plane well well well the distance tells parshall that the tail came off the plane before it hit the ground [Music] if he can figure out why the tail came off in mid-air he'll be one step closer to finding the cause of the crash check this out the wreckage of twa flight 2 shows clear evidence of a catastrophic impact the plane's skin has been shredded parshall also finds small streaks of blue paint we're going to need this brought up to the hangar on the canyon floor 700 meters from the constellation lies a piece of the other plane the dc-7s wingtip is streaked with red paint and is nowhere near the rest of the plane it also came off in midair it was a smoking gun when you find red on an airplane that has no red that pretty well proves the point that something happened up there that was not part of that airplane as it took off los angeles this is one of the things that cinched the deal the evidence points to an incredibly rare almost unheard of event they definitely swap some paint up there it wasn't severe weather that brought down two planes from two of america's largest airlines damn what's he doing there it was a mid-air collision for a dc-7 crew to look up and see a white constellation right in their face first of all there's going to be a nano second or two of absolute complete disbelief oh god big big big muscle memory kicks in for any experienced pilot and that's when the yolk gets grabbed and thrown in in whatever direction raising the wing trying to get out of the way but the dynamics at that point in time are too late the collision over the grand canyon is one of the most significant accidents in the history of commercial aviation it was an earth-shaking event that took place there that day what jack parshall uncovers through his investigation could affect commercial aviation across the country already certain there's been a mid-air collision he now needs to figure out exactly how the two planes collided and why can we get that piece over there please thanks guys parshall has to recreate the final moments of the two flights based on bent metal and streaks of paint it was one heck of a challenge to match those two aircraft up and come to a deduced conclusion as to what happened they start to look at models in a mid-air collision to put things together and figure out could this wing have interfered with this horizontal stabilizer etc now let's see we got in the dc7 to try and build a scenario that matches some of the minute clues that they may have like impact marks like paint transfer marks take a picture please the paint transfer evidence tells parshal that the dc-7's left wing hit the constellation from behind it was obvious that the dc-7 had probably overrun the constellation from the right rear side [Music] had come apart literally knocked the tail off the constellation plummets towards the grand canyon more than 17 000 feet below united 718 has lost half of its left wing but not all of its engines what's the damage is out airspeed 260. on level out 8 000 now anyone who survives emitter collision is luck because it depends on what the damage to their airplane you have to have enough left to control the airplane less than a minute after the collision twa flight 2 slams into the canyon floor in the dc-7 bob shirley and his crew struggle to avoid the same fate this airplane is going to be rolling rapidly to the left and it has no control parshal now understands the mechanics of how the two planes collided but he still doesn't know why their flight paths crossed they were supposed to be flying different routes at different altitudes they should not have been in the same place at the same time damn what's he doing now needs to know how that happened today the only three bodies found from the united airlines plane were brought up by helicopter here army cab and airline officials talk over future operations as this somber announcement is made that next monday a single reverent burial service in three faiths is planned at flagstaff arizona for the unidentified victims of the two planes this crash in the grand canyon startled everybody and galvanized the country i would just imagine that parshall was very cognizant of the fact that this was probably the most critical investigation he had ever been involved with and that the consequences for getting it wrong in any respect could have tremendous negative ramifications for this fledgling industry investigators continue climbing through the wreckage of two passenger planes that collided over the grand canyon jack parshall reviews the plane's flight plans so they both start the day at lax united flight 718 taxi to position and hold c 7 18 was cleared green airway 5 out of la direct to palm springs junction to needles then on the painted desert line here at 21 000 feet twa was cleared amber airway five green airway two direct to daggett and then crossing painted desert line at 19 000 feet either one of them should have been over the canyon it's clear both planes diverted from their original flight plan but partial knows that's not uncommon what you would find pilots doing is they would file a flight plan along the airways and once you get airborne and you're more or less out of the heavy congested area of an airport then you refile your what you really want to do which is direct here direct there direct someplace else with no cockpit voice recorder to help them investigators turn to radio dispatch recordings and transcripts the radio calls between the pilots and their company dispatchers may hold clues about the routes the two planes actually took that we're at day springs junction united 718 we're at needles 9.58 21 000 feet clear skies that's the last one they reported of course direct to durango estimated crossing the painted desert line at 10 31 10 31 they had 33 minutes to get there so how come they never made it to answer that question parshall needs to learn more about the movements of the other plane now lying at the bottom of the grand canyon let's see what twa did twa two cleared for takeoff on runway two five right roger coffee cleared for takeoff two five right twa flight two took off three minutes ahead of the united flight in a different direction it was to fly northeast towards its first checkpoint daggert dwa 2 on route kansas city passing daggett at 19 000. roger twa two one nine thousand at daggett [Music] the twa pilot was jack gandy with fifteen thousand hours as captain he was nearly as experienced as united's bob shirley gandhi knew these skies well he'd flown this route nearly 200 times good morning twa dispatch twa2 we've got a little bit of weather here we want to get on top of be a good man and ask salt lake to clear us to twenty one thousand roger twa two requesting clearance at twenty one thousand feet so twa asked for 21 000. so salt lake clears them no requests deny due to conflicting traffic advisory twa2 unable to approve to 1000 due to traffic that's a no-go on 21 000. united 718 is there captain gandhi wants to avoid the clouds in his path and in 1956 he has another way to accomplish that let's just get on top of this stuff he uses visual flight rules or vfr roger that if i salt lake i'm going to vfr and 1000 on top salt lake twa 2 requesting 1 000 on top maintain at least 1 000 on top advise twa 2 his traffic is united 718 direct durango the twa crew was cleared to fly a thousand feet above the clouds but warned to look out for united 718. well they used to have a procedure to operate a thousand feet on top you meant you stayed a thousand feet away from clouds but you stayed in the clear and you were supposed to be vfr looking around for traffic so at daggett he asked for 1 000 on top that's all fine so where does that get him his next report is from mojave at 9 59. [Music] twa 2 passing lake mojave 1 000 on top at 21 000 estimate painted desert at 10 31 half an hour after requesting 1 000 on top gandhi reports his actual altitude 21 000 feet now they're both there they could fly at any altitude they wanted as long as it was a thousand feet uh separation from those clouds so they took a thousand on top and then selected to fly at 21 000 feet investigators now understand how the twa flight ended up at the same altitude as united 718. as for why both planes diverted from their scheduled routes at the same time damn what's he doing there [Music] the answer is the crash site itself [Music] an awe-inspiring natural wonder let's give him a look shawn all right captain it was common of making a few turns of the grand canyon to show people the grand canyon i mean that happened every flight because the grand canyon is such a spectacular sight wonderful sights to see way down below the grand canyon for instance one of the seven wonders of the world sightseeing in terms of uh what you could show to the passengers was something that really lit up the senior flight crew i can actually show you something that nobody else can show you i can dazzle you with things that you as an ordinary human being who doesn't fly would never see just keep your eyes peeled and you'll get a spectacular view no matter where you're sitting how are we doing on your side bob thunderhead about five miles south we're clear of it okey-dokey we've got some room you were free to if you wanted to dv a little bit for sightseeing uh that you could it wasn't dangerous nothing dangerous about him damn but on june the 30th 1956 it proves fatal oh god jack parshall needs to find out how such a common practice killed 128 people from the very beginning of aviation we had the concept of see and avoid or see and be seen the responsibility for separation of aircraft was still the pilot's responsibility knows that united hit twa on the right side coming from behind one of the pilots failed to see and avoid partial needs to figure out which one what's he doing the answer will lead to sweeping changes in the rules governing commercial aviation all right let's see what captain shirley can see out there using a scale model of the dc7 cockpit and airspeed estimates for both planes parshall tries to calculate the distance at which the united pilots could have first spotted the constellation what were the views of the flight crew members from each one of the aircraft could they have seen each other did they try and avoid each other so they ended up like this let's go back a couple of minutes those are the kinds of things that that investigator in charge i'm sure was asking himself and uh getting his team together to try and deduce from the evidence i'm gonna need you over there investigators begin to suspect that there may be serious problems with the whole idea of see and avoid keep going keep going let me tell you one of the dirty little truths of commercial aviation from the 50s all the way to now we have been under sea and a void but you can't see in most cases even to avoid and that's because the windows are very small all right keep going a little bit further keep going stop come back half a step right there that's where shirley would have first seen the connie since the dc-7 was behind the constellation it was captain shirley's responsibility to avoid it oh god come on baby come on parshal wants to find out if he had enough time to do that there are basic rules and those basic rules are to uh indeed if you see an impending situation the overtaking aircraft will give way to the aircraft in front the six pilots in both planes were preoccupied with the demanding job of flying their aircraft you had a piston plane you had the throttles you had the propeller rpm to adjust your rpm the engines sound good mr fiori how are the tennis yeah old steady skipper still running a little rich there's really a lot more to do a lot more to do flying a um a piston airplane that'd be 53 miles pashal's test shows that in theory the constellation would have been visible to the dc-7 crew when it was 85 kilometers or 53 miles away the numbers suggest the captain shirley had two full minutes to avoid a collision that's more than enough time to safely change course damn oh god come on baby come on parshall needs to know why that didn't [Music] happen the answer becomes clear when he reviews the radio recordings dispatch twa2 we've got a little bit of weather here we want to get on top of it ask salt lake to clear us to 21 000. on june the 30th the skies over arizona were not clear folks we got a bit of weather over the canyon so it could get a bit bumpy nothing to worry about how are we doing on your side bob thunder about five miles south we're clearly donkey donkey we've got some room they were flying i hate to say fat dumb and happy but in effect that's a phrase we use when you think everything's copacetic when he factors cloud cover into the equation partial reaches a stunning conclusion the crew of flight 718 had just seconds to recognize and avoid the plane ahead of them boom the collision was unavoidable you have seconds to respond to identify uh to develop a uh or formulate a evasive maneuver and execute it and for the aircraft to respond to any control inputs that you put in there there was no indication in the heads of any of the pilots on either of those two flight decks that they were in proximity of anybody else in a dangerous way until they came around a cloud and all of a sudden the dc-7 crew has a connie right in their face and the county crew i'm sure that they to the moment of death had no idea what ever hit them when jack parshall sits down to report his findings he faces intense pressure the reputation of an industry hinges on what he has to say we're really there to try and prevent the next accident a recurrence of similar circumstances that set up an accident but certainly with the high death toll 128 people died that day two major airlines of america running into each other there was a call to find out who was guilty who was to blame the obvious conclusion is that the pilots were to blame a lot of people want to lay the blame on twa's captain jack gandy roger that by salt lake i'm going to vfr and 1000 on top it was gandhi's decision to switch altitudes that put his plane in the path of united 718 but a strict interpretation of the rules would put the blame on united pilot captain bob shirley damn what's he doing there in a perfectly sterile analysis of this the overtaking aircraft the one who's overtaking the other aircraft has the legal responsibility of avoiding the aircraft they're overtaking right there but partial's calculations have shown there was no way for captain shirley to avoid the collision i think it's not only fair to say that these two crews were following the rules and doing everything the way that they understood it should be done 21 000 feet now they're both there but that this was the way society in aviation viewed the broad way to do it at the time there is one last possible culprit the air traffic controller who told twa about the united flight but didn't advise the dc-7 crew about the constellation maintain at least one thousand on top advise twa to his traffic is united seven one eight there was an attempt to throw blame in all directions very human very understandable by the same token when it came to blame put on the air traffic controllers it was very misplaced with no radar coverage air traffic controllers could not visually track flights it was impossible for them to advise every company dispatcher on the precise location of every plane in the sky i think if we try and pin the issue down to who was to blame we're probably looking at the at this this accident in an inappropriate way it has become clear to parshall that no one person is to blame for the mid-air collision those two aircraft were put in the proximity of each other by the rules and the regulations the real cause of the crash is something much bigger something that goes to the very heart of aviation in america jack parshall concludes that blame for the grand canyon disaster lies not with the pilots [Music] not with the controllers but with a completely inadequate air traffic control system the subtext in that report had to be very delicately placed in front of the congress and the american public but the subtext is very clear and that is you know it's not a matter of the system being broken guys we don't have a system this is a great non-system of air traffic control and until we get a handle on that we are not going to be able to rise to the level of assurance of separation in any degree that the public is obviously expecting the grand canyon crash and jack parshall's report provoked dramatic changes in american aviation as a result of the event in the grand canyon something new was born there was a a new awareness to the public's right desire and interest in air travel and that was fostered by lots of very innovative designs and traffic collision avoidance systems that are present in today's environment the main outcome of the grand canyon collision is that the united states now has a nationwide radar system controllers can now track the movements of planes in even the most remote parts of the country the only way you're going to assure that this will never happen again is if you've got somebody positively controlling whoever's up there to where they cannot get too close to each other they can't change altitudes at the right time you can't mix the traffic and that meant radar coverage across the entirety of the country despite all the advances air traffic controllers still face challenges more planes in the sky flying faster and higher than ever before and though extremely rare mid-air collisions still do occur in response aviation officials are developing a system that could transform air traffic control in america the next generation air transportation system or next gen will use gps satellites to give pilots the precise location of the traffic around them by the year 2020 pilots will know exactly how close they are to all other aircraft without air traffic controllers having to tell them hopefully the next generation of air traffic control will look back on that event of the grand canyon and we'll try and get ahead of it before such another tragedy does recur as the era of romantic air travel fades into history the lessons learned from the grand canyon disaster remain flying can always be made safer i'm reminded constantly anytime i study an older accident of something that was said by george santiana in 1917 an american philosopher who said those wonderful words he who cannot remember the past is condemned to repeat it [Music] you

Channel: On The Move

Views: 344,743

Keywords: on the move, cars, planes, trains, documentary, documentaries, full length documentaries, plane documentary, mayday series, mayday, plane disasters, airport, runway, plane pilot, pilot, hd documentary, 2021 documentary, air disaster, grand canyon, america, united states, aviation, air collision, collision, 1956

Id: j6xsEXV1DTc

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021