Air Crash Investigation 2016 United Flight [45:47]

Colorado Denver Stapleton Airport July 19th 1989 known as the Gateway to the Rockies Denver is the starting point for journeys all over the u.s. 1300 planes take off from here every day carrying over 75,000 passengers it's the peak of the summer season and Stapleton is packed with vacationers and business travelers Debbi McKelvey will be among the vacationers flying from Stapleton today she's taking her children Devin h6 and her son Ryan who's 7 - a family reunion back in her home state of Pennsylvania [Music] I was going home for two weeks with my children and I was very very excited about the trip debbie is taking advantage of United Airlines Children's Day promotion today kids under 14 can fly for one set but each must fly with a paying adult Debbie pairs up with a tennis fun girlfriend roof nests so she can sit with one of the kids it was nice having Ruth with me because she entertained one child while I was entertaining the other child 1:15 p.m. Debbie Ruth on the kids wait to board flight you a 232 to Philadelphia by Chicago commanding the flight is captain Alfred C Haines his cabin staff reported a minor electrical fault in the galley on the previous leg but engineers have given it the all-clear captain Haynes is a veteran pilot with 7,000 190 hours locked in the dc-10 the passengers will be in safe hands today the dc-10 is a greater plane to fly it's I think this was termed an old man's airplane because it's so simple to fly but this time in the late 1980s there are over 400 dc-10s in service but it's a plane with a troubled history Windsor Ontario 1972 a cargo door blows out on a year-old dc-10 causing severe decompression the pilots managed to land the plane safely two years later a door comes off a Turkish Airlines dc-10 flying out of Paris this time the violent decompression tears the plane apart in midair all 346 people on board died McDonnell Douglas finds the fault and fixes it but the reputation of the dc-10 never fully recovers the dc-10 making flights to 32 today is in its 17th year of service and has flown over 43,000 hours so far without incident today should be no difference Gerry Schemmel is Deputy Commissioner of the continental Basketball Association and a frequent flyer I was never nervous flyer right I always kind of enjoyed flying I took my first flight at age 18 I always enjoyed it Gerry is flying to Columbus on business with his boss and great friend Jai Ram stole their original flight is canceled but Jay gets a seat on the very next bite the bad news is there's no seat for Jerry Jay decides to stay with his buddy and wait for an even later plane I didn't think much out at that time I thought it was a nice gesture I thought to myself I hope I would own the same thing finally after a six and a half hour wait Jerry and Jay both get seats on flight UA 232 to Philadelphia flight 232 is busy today it's carrying 285 passengers and 11 crew Debbi McKelvey boards with her friend and two kids they add to an unusually high number of children on board 52 in total thanks to the children's they deal for senior flight attendant Jam Brown law lots of children on board means a busy flight ahead after a four-day trip Jan is excited to be heading home to Chicago I just remember feeling just the energy of this last leg and getting all pumped up to do the service captain Haynes copilot bill records and flight engineer EE Dvorak run through their pre-flight checks they taxi ad to the runway and a wait the takeoff clearance at 2:09 p.m. the three engine jet flies out of Denver the morning we left dinner it was clear skies beautiful day nice smooth air comfortable flight just a routine flight Debbi McKelvey sits with her son Ryan while her friend Ruth is one row behind looking after her daughter Devon at 3:16 p.m. they're finishing their meal [Music] suddenly out of the blue a terrifying gloss rips through the plane the first thing I thought was a bomb has gone off I really did I thought someone had planted a bomb it had been detonated and we started to drop the only way I can think to explain it it's like you're driving down a highway and you hit a pothole John Brown law fears it may be a breach in the plane's fuselage I instinctively snapped out on the floor and held on not knowing if it were a decompression that everything that isn't tied down securely is going to be sucked out there's no sign of any visible damage inside the plane but up in the cockpit captain Haynes scans the engine instruments and quickly realizes that his number 2 engine is malfunctioning never had a generator to fail in play only in the plates if they're never in play but this time it's happening for real 3:17 p.m. captain Haynes priority is to shut down the problem engine he's not too worried the dc-10 can fly comfortably on its remaining two wing mounted engines Haynes follows the shutdown procedure and cuts off fuel and power to the number 2 engine [Music] the problem engine is off but now flight engineer Dudley Dvorak spots something else wrong his instruments tell him that all three of the plane's hydraulic systems are empty he cannot believe his eyes the hydraulic systems operate the plane's flaps ailerons rudder and elevator without these controls the pilots won't be able to steer the plane or take it up or down but the instruments are right copilot bill records is horrified to find his flight controls are no longer responding the plane starts to bank steeply to the right and he's powerless to stop it that's when we realized we were in the world of hurt something was drastically wrong now captain Haynes tries the flight controls but he cannot get the dc-10 back into level flight either the plane is now trying to roll over a terrifying prospect we have nothing to turn the airplane nothing to control the pitch of the aircraft it's every pilots nightmare flight 232 is at 11,000 meters and out of control if its left wing continues to live the plane will flip over and tumble to its doom United Airlines flight 232 is down to two engines were still the plane has lost all conventional flight controls despite everything that captain Haynes tries the plane seems bent on turning over back in the cabin the passengers feel the plane banking steeply now my son at seven and a half he had always been a people watcher and he looked around and he said something's not right here you can feel the turn you can feel the sensation physically of your body leaning off to the right side I remember feeling that thinking that was very unusual 3:18 p.m. the left wing is so high that the plane is in an extremely steep Bank Al Haynes knows that within a few more seconds it will roll over and tumble out of control there is just one old Aviators trick left for him if it fails like 232 is doomed the first reaction was to just close one throttle and push the other one up see if maybe that would help in a desperate bid to restore level flight Haynes tries adjusting the relative power of the two wing engines if the right engine runs faster the airplane will Bank left and vice versa it works captain Haynes is able to pull the plane out of its roll he still has no fight controls but he regains a crude form of steering by using the throttles the tames finds that he can only make white hand turns 3:20 p.m. copilot bill records radios minneapolis air route traffic control center he reports the loss of flight controls and requests a flight path to the nearest airport the pilots have no idea how they're going to land the crippled plane now captain Haynes tells passengers that one engine has failed but he doesn't mention the loss of flight controls not all the passages find his words reassuring you could just feel a tenseness in a flight attendants and that's when you kind of felt there's something not right here captain Hayes knows that time is running out you a 232 is dropping at around 250 meters per minute they need to attempt an emergency landing soon before they lose height altogether 3:22 air traffic control informs the flight crew that their nearest runway is it's suit gateway this is a small Regional Airport near the sleepy town of Sioux City Iowa 325 B M a quiet afternoon in a Sioux City fire station is about to get a whole lot busier when Fire Chief Robert Hamilton hears an alert called in he suspects something big I've been a long time and you can kind of tell now you have almost a sixth sense I guess within minutes the fire chief's hunch is proved correct you a 232 is heading right for his city nine fire trucks race out to their emergency positions on one of the runways [Music] now captain Haynes and his crew have to work out how they're going to land the plane with barely any controls before they can make a plan they had another problem the dc-10 starts to soar up and then down in a random uncontrollable cycle for the pilots it's like riding a roller coaster through the sky but no idea how long we're going to keep that airplane this guy Debbie McKelvey feels the planes erratic motion and fears for her life here I have a six year old and a 7 year old you start praying if I'm gonna die please make sure we all go we all go quick 3:26 p.m. captain Haynes calls his senior flight attendants up to the cockpit when I open that door the whole atmosphere hit me it's the worst crisis possible the captain tells Jan to prepare the cabin for an emergency landing as I walk through the first-class cabin I just could not look anybody in the eye because I was afraid they'd they'd read the fear and mine Denny Fitch there's a dc-10 training pilot flying home from an instructor session he knows that something is wrong and offers his help 329 what Denny finds in the cockpit shocks him it was an amazing scene for me because both the pilots were in fact on the controls both of them their tendons in the forearms are raised from effort their knuckles are white from grip as an expert training pilot Denny Fitch is ready for any emergency but he's never seen anything like this before I was dumbfounded because it was unheard of in a matter of fact there was no procedure for having no idea the first thought that came to my mind to be honest was that I was going to die that afternoon captain Haynes now tells his passengers the plane is damaged and they'll be making an emergency landing in Sioux City 296 people could lose their lives getting this airplane down without crashing will be the ultimate test of pilot skill Denny offers to help out any way he can I said captain would you want me to do your throttles and he'd responded yes do that Denny takes over on the throttles the only controls still functioning they allow him some degree of steering but the plane is still only able to make right-hand turns as far as I'm concerned he's now the fourth member of the crew because he was willing to step in there and then compass a quake good 348 the dc-10 is now 12 minutes from Sioux City Airport and they're running out of altitude it's time for the pilots to face an almost unthinkable prospect in a few minutes they must attempt to land a 165 tons yet without proper flight controls the lives of 285 passengers are in their hands [Music] the pilots must now try to line up for the final approach into Sioux City Airport Denny Fitch will attempt to steer the plane and control its descent all by adjusting the throttles what's more the plane can only make right-hand turns the plan is to make a series of looping turns and hope that as they come out of their final circuit they're facing the runway the odds are stacked against them at 3:50 p.m. senior flight attendant Jan brown law begins her final safety briefing the passengers were right there in the palm of our hand there you could have heard a pin drop Jan pays special attention to the four children too small to have their own seats official guidelines of nonspecific but United Airlines procedure at the time is for adults to hold these lap children on the floor during an emergency landing [Music] Jan is anxious about the procedure but has no option but to follow protocol it makes my skin crawl to this day to think that I find myself telling passengers parents of lab children to put their child on the floor and hold them down as the flight crew Nia Sioux City they are only too aware of what's at stake you've got 296 lives in your two hands you literally do and I've never felt so overwhelmingly you know responsible for anything in my life with no brakes the dc-10 will need a long runway air traffic control assigns them runway 31 at 2700 meters it's the longest at Sioux City 352 p.m. Denny Fitch puts the plane into its final looping turn he knows the crippled jet would never be able to regain altitude for a second attempt this was it we had to land on that runway one time so we had as they emerge from their final loop the pilot seal wonderful sight Sioux City Airport dead ahead there's just one problem it's the wrong runway here we are just runway right in front of us we're out of time we're out altitude test for runway 22 is much shorter than runway 31 and it's full of fire trucks and ambulances it wasn't until probably a couple of minutes at the most that we had a change in that that the runway was actually shifted them from 133 1 to runway 2 to 359 fire trucks race out of the pop of the plunging dc-10 and so we were basically just kind of scrambling getting out of the way if you will and trying to get to an ideal position for that particular runway [Music] captain Haynes orders the passengers into the brace position the minute we said brace it was like a breeze going over a field of wheat everybody in the cabin disappeared from sight to go into their brace position I kept thinking this is it and I actually made my son shut the window shade I thought we don't need to see you know the end as its come as the pilots desperately try to line up the airplane with the runway they realize they're still coming in at 400 km/h around 150 kilometres per hour faster than normal but with no control of the flaps they cannot slow the descent the alarm sounds from the ground proximity warning system they're descending too rapidly the plane is plunging at 560 meters per minute over six times the normal rate down on the ground a local news crew races into position to cover the crash landing for p.m. just seconds from landing the nose and right wing drop if they come in at this angle the plane could break apart and I shoved both the throttles to maximum power hoping that that reason that would result in the nose being pulled up Denny Fitch desperately struggles to bring the nose back up but it's too late the engines don't respond in time 4:00 p.m. and 16 seconds the plane smashes into the runway it just felt like we dropped by the sky and hit the ground it wasn't like it was an emergency landing it was it was a crash I could hear all the screeching metal the noises that you've never heard before you hope you never hear again the right landing gear and wing shear off spilling fuel and sparking a fire I could see fireballs because I guess the plane you know it's screeching on the runway and then that was my next thought oh my god we're gonna burn to death the jet Korea's along the runway on its wing stopped for about 600 meters then breaks apart the cockpit had snapped off like a pencil tip and we became a tumbling to my mother on a piece of wreckage the main section of the fuselage skids further down the runway rolls over on its back and comes to a halt at the side of the airfield the plane is split into three main pieces cockpit tail section and middle passenger section dozens of surviving passengers flee the burning cabin fire trucks and ambulances race to help them emergency workers arrived to an horrific scene of dead and injured passengers survivors escaping the wreckage scattered through cornfields at the edge of the runway Debbie and her son Ryan are among them I grabbed my son and we started running and running and I had no idea where we are some of the children and babies held on the floor before landing are missing the violence of the crash tore them from their parents grasp one grief-stricken mother confronts flight attendant Jan Brown law and she just looked up at me and she said you told me to put him on the floor that are weeping all right and I thought I'm going to live with those words for the rest of my life the child 23 month old Evan Zhou tragically died in the burning jet in the chaos of the crash debbie McKelvey and her son Ryan managed to get out of the wreck but she can't see six-year-old daughter Devin anywhere so then you start really thinking why didn't I have both of them and and it's just a horrible horrible sinking feeling Jerry Schemmel escapes the cabin unhurt but now he hears a baby's cries despite the choking fumes he benches back inside the burning aircraft I didn't think if I go back in the thing will explode or it might not find my way back out I just reacted I heard the cry as a baby and the next thing you know I'm back inside the aircraft as the central cabin section burns it starts the fill with toxic fumes smoke like this can kill in minutes parents like Debbie McKelvey fear that their missing children could still be somewhere inside the blazing Jets flight 232 crashes at Sioux City Airport and lies in a smoking ruin at the edge of the runway survivors flee the crashed airliner but a baby's cries draw passenger Jerry Schemmel back inside which I finally got rid over top to crying and I'm feeling around and there's a baby and stuck inside this overhead Ben I just grabbed a baby with one arm and scooped her out of a hole I got back on my feet found the opening just kind of aim for the the sunlight and shot out that plane the second time Jerez actions probably saved the baby's life but debbie McKelvey is desperate she fears her daughter and friend have not survived the crash then suddenly she spots a face it's a six year old daughter devon emerging from the slope it was the absolute best feeling because she was there and she was okay while passengers flee the wreckage captain Haynes and the flight crew are trapped in the cockpit the plane's nose has buried itself into the soft earth beside the runway it's the last place the rescuers reach they have to use a forklift and cutting equipment to get through the twisted wreckage it takes 30 minutes to reach the pilots at 5:00 p.m. rescuers pulled out all four pilots seriously injured but alive as I remember the pad on my chest in his words to me where you're okay buddy I'm here I got you you're gonna be okay and I felt this tremendous relief the flaming wreck of you a 232 burns for over two hours [Music] nine helicopters and 34 ambulances evacuate survivors jerry camels thoughts turned his buddy j whom he lost sight up in the crash jerry hopes that he might have made it but as time goes by he loses all hope I had a pretty good hunch eight hours I have to crash when he hadn't show up anywhere that he was a survivor J Rams door is one of 111 passengers who lose their lives in the crash one flight attendant is also killed 11 children are among the dead remarkably 184 people survived the Sioux City crash but for the pilots of flight 232 any number of deaths is a tragedy training pilot Denny Fitch learns how many died when his wife visits him in hospital [Music] and chic started crying because she realized I didn't know the truth that in fact 112 people had died behind me and and I saw her cry I had my answer and I cried every waking moment for the next three days I just couldn't stop crying it it just so tore my heart out to know that people died behind me I was ready to die for them and I didn't want them to die al Haynes and the flight crew how determined that something positive should come out of the tragedy I would like to say that this crew and in fact the entire industry is dedicated to finding the cause of this accident so maybe we can never have it happen again [Music] the National Transportation Safety Board or NTSB dispatches an investigation team to Sioux City with 427 dc-10s still in service all around the world they need to find out what happened to the plane and quickly Frank hilldrup leads the team analyzing the aircraft structure there's a lot of apprehension and anxiety of course that we always go into these things with and I was fairly new at the time and I've been with the agency but for about nine months he'll jump on the NTSB team arrived in Iowa nine hours after the crash and get straight down to work the investigators first priority is to try to recover every piece of the wreckage so that they can reassemble the aircraft it's a mammoth task there was such an immense accident scene that we just we just knew we had a long investigation ahead of ourselves the crash scatters thousands of fragments of debris over a distance of one kilometer emergency services in the National Guard mobilize hundreds of personnel they scour every square meter of land around the runway the tiniest component might tell them what triggered the crash as investigator Jim while he knows only too well if you want to understand how the airplane came apart if you want to understand their interrelationships or various pieces it is very useful sometimes to put the structure back together investigators interview the four pilots to explore the bizarre loss of controls they reported during the flight captain Haynes and the crew confirmed that shortly after the dramatic failure of their number two engine all their hydraulic systems went down it mystifies investigator Frank you'll drop I know personally I wasn't prepared for dealing with an airplane crash where it had lost all of his hydraulics extremely unique event and something I firstly had never encountered before hydraulics operate all the flight controls on the dc-10 the flaps that help control this end the elevators that pitch the plane up and down the rudder that steers it the ailerons that make it back pressurized fluid inside hydraulic lines operates these mechanical controls there are three separate and independent hydraulic systems even if one system is breached it should not cause the loss of hydraulic fluid in the others to lose fluid from all three systems at once is almost impossible experts but the odds the billion to one then an unexpected find farmers 90 kilometers from Sioux City report aircraft wreckage scattered on their land investigators examine the debris and find that it includes components from the number two hydraulic system in the tail near the failed engine the team can calculate from the planes flight path exactly when these parks fell they discover it happened at 3:16 here the same moment as the loud bang and the engine failure everything points to a catastrophic event inside the engine which then damages the hydraulic systems they go back to the wreck plane and examine every millimeter of its hydraulic lines it's a painstaking process but it pays off they find puncture holes in the pressure lines of the planes other two hydraulic systems and the holes in both sets of pressure lines are near the failed engine we determined that all the three hydraulic systems had been breached and that that's why the hydraulic fluid was lost and they lost the ability to really control the airplane it's incredible but true something did put all three hydraulic systems out of action at exactly the same moment but the team still has to prove that the number two engine caused the damage they inspect the puncture holes with a scanning electron microscope and find my new traces of titanium titanium is used for critical airplane parts because it's tough yet very light on the dc-10 the only titanium anywhere near the tail section is inside the number 2 engine [Music] and when NTSB engineers reconstruct the dc-10s number two engine a new clue confirms the team's theory we learned a major portion of the number two engine in the tail of the airplane had come apart miss missing the missing part is the fan disc the massive central hub of the engines fan assembly it's made of titanium investigators are starting to get a picture of what caused the bizarre loss of controls aboard flight UA to 30 to 44 minutes from disaster the loud bank that crew and passengers here is the 170 kilogram fan desk fracturing the broken fan disc bursts through the engine housing the blast fractures a section of the number two hydraulic system but in a piece of catastrophic bad luck fragments also puncture lines in both remaining systems zero forty-two minutes to go the plane loses all its flight controls the tail section is so badly damaged that the plane can only make right-hand turns without elevators the pilots cannot keep the plane on a level flight path through the sky [Music] but the NTSB investigators still don't know what caused the fan base to fracture until they find out more than 200 other BC tens could be flying around with engines that have a similar hidden fault [Music] they must locate an examine the missing pieces of fan disc [Music] investigators calculate the likely trajectory of the fan disk debris to find out where it might have landed they narrow it down to attractive Iowa Corn Belt 36 square kilometers in size I would consider the search flat fan desk throwing a needle in a haystack type of effort investigators pull out all the stops to find the missing fan disc they scour the area with four helicopters but find that the three meter high corn stalks conceal everything on the ground they even deploy infrared cameras to try to locate the pieces but after weeks of searching they draw a blank General Electric the engine manufacturer offers members of the public a large reward for the missing pandas [Music] but there's still no sign of it two months go by and harvest time comes around Janice and Dale Sorensen have a 180 hectare farm right in the middle of the search area choose the October 10th 1989 and Janice onsen is out bringing in the corn as I was combining I felt a little resistance on the front of the combine and I backed it up and then put it in neutral and got out and looked and I knew immediately that this was a piece say we're looking for it's a massive chunk of debris half buried in the earth teams from general electric and the NTSB race to the Sorenson farm daelin Janus help investigators dig out the piece of wreckage this is the Sorensen's own video footage of their find I had a little shovel long and I went and got the tractor or the loader and put a chain around it I stood it up and then we took it down to the turkey shed which was not very far away and we had hot water there so we washed it off spick-and-span investigators quickly confirm that the debris is a major chunk of the missing fan disc from flight UA 232 then they find another piece nearby together the two parts complete the entire missing fan disc [Music] Jenna Sorenson learns that her find could hold the key to the disaster that was very emotional about it I had some peers it was a combination of excitement of finding the peace and the tears for those who lost their lives one more Janice and her husband Bale collect General Electric's 120 thousand dollar reward they give over half the money to charity the NTSB can now begin the next phase of their investigation they fly the fractured fan disc to the labs of the engine manufacturer General Electric to find out what could break apart such a robust metal component Jim Wiley a metallic is by training examines the fan disc starting with the main fracture line where it broke apart he spots something branching off it a fatigue crack 13 millimeters loss it's rare to find metal fatigue in a fan disk these components are specifically designed to withstand the enormous rotational forces within the engine then of the base of the fatigue crack wildly sees a tiny cavity the size of it was maximum in any one direction was about 50 thousandths of an inch as he scans the cavity more closely he sees that the metal around it looks discolored he takes a sample from this suspect area for testing what he discovers will shock the investigation team and rock the aviation industry to its core investigator Jim Wildey examines a tiny cavity in the fractured fan disk from flight UA 232 what he finds stuns him around the cavity there is an impurity in the titanium alloy it's called a hard alpha inclusion of brittle defect smaller than a fingernail analysis reveals that it was caused by excess nitrogen during the forging of the metal Inga the fan disk in the vc10 was made from titanium that harbored a fatal hidden defect it's the final piece of the puzzle the NTSB team can now put together the chain of events that left the passengers and crew of quite you a 232 seconds from disaster [Music] as the dc-10s fan disc rotates at 3800 RPM the huge stresses initiate a minut crack in the defect with every flight it grows fractionally bigger July 19 1989 44 minutes from disaster the fan disc has been in service for fifteen thousand five hundred and three flights over 17 years the crack reaches 13 millimeters in length the faulty pandas can no longer cope with the stresses imposed by its rotation it she is in two the damage it causes makes the dc-10 virtually unplayable for the next 40 minutes the pilots struggle to control the plane five minutes to go flight 232 comes out of its final turn into Sioux City 20 seconds as the plane comes in to land the right wing cloths disaster strikes the right wing tip hits the ground and the dc-10 careers down the runway a 21 million dollar jet weighing 165 tons is brought down by a tiny metallic floor for the NTSB investigation team there's a terrible twist to the tragedy investigators discover that United Airlines technicians made a routine inspection of the defective fan disc just 16 months before the crash they're disturbed the crack was on the fan disk surface at the time of the inspection the crack could have been close to 13 millimeters long this disk had been inspected before the accident and we determined that the crack was of a detectable size but that it just wasn't detected the NTSB report concluded that the crack was probably missed due to human error [Applause] the report accepted that United Airlines inspection procedures complied with regulations and were up to industry standard and cited human factors as an industry-wide problem in engine inspection [Music] in the wake of the Sioux City disaster the Federal Aviation Authority upgraded engine inspection procedures the FAA also demanded changes to the dc-10 hydraulic systems airlines were required to add shutoff valves to limit the amount of fluid that can drain from a breach in hydraulic lines but today lab children are still allowed to remain unrestrained during emergency landings ever since the crash Jam Brown law has campaigned for all children to have allocated seats and safety restraints on airplanes she has never forgotten the young boy Evan Zhou who lost his life on her watch Evan would be 17 years old today had he been in a seat Denny Fitch pal Haynes and the other crew members received industry awards for their extraordinary professionalism and valor [Music] jerry Schemmel who now has children of his own will never forget the debt he owes the pilots I have thought about those guys every day for 16 years I don't think we could have been equipped with a better copy crew than what we had [Music] the safety measures triggered by the Sioux City crash transformed aviation safety not just on the dc-10 but on all passenger airliners the new rules should ensure that such a bizarre and devastating accident can never happen again you

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Length: 97min 30sec (5850 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2016