Engines Stuck On Full Throttle | Fight For Control | FULL EPISODE | Mayday: Air Disaster

[Music] cold bay alaska a frontier town at the tip of the alaskan peninsula surrounded by the aleutian mountains and thousands of kilometers of ocean reevolution airlines is one of cold bay's only links to the outside world it operates a small fleet of rugged planes carrying people and cargo across the state and beyond revolution airlines flight 8 prepares to leave cold bay for seattle washington the route will take the flight over a wide stretch of the north pacific ocean 54 year old captain james gibson is a hardened bush pilot with more than 25 years experience flying alaska's tough terrain said takeoff thrust gibson's flight engineer thruster is 45 year old alaskan gerald moose lauren his first officer is 39 year old gary linthner generally we flew that route once a week on this particular day we were scheduled for five hours of flying time gear up gear up [Music] flaps up there flaps up uh revade is off the ground about two three rebate roger and have a good fight there are 10 passengers on board mostly hunters and anglers wendy croon is the senior flight attendant we were headed to seattle it was a beautiful day it was clear no turbulence highly unusual highly unusual there should have been turbulence pacific winds and the nearby aleutian mountains often create turbulent skies captain gibson will cross the north pacific aboard a lockheed l-188 electro powered by four turbo prop engines they're um just an incredibly tough airplane stronger than 10 acres of garlic i used to always say gibson finishes turning his aircraft on course towards seattle when he hears an unusual buzzing sound you hear that girl i do not sure i noticed that the vibration that i was feeling in my feet and the vibration that was in the glass was different and that's the first time i'd ever come across that and i thought well this is a little different uh hell please have a look with you yeah you bet as gibson and lintner wait for moose lauren to report back the vibrations become more pronounced i distinctly remember looking down and seeing my control yoke shaking and i turned to jim and i said jesus look at this and jim and i are kind of looking at each other across the cockpit and finally he says screw this let's turn around meanwhile wendy croon helps lauren check the engines the engineer said i want you to come back and check number four engine and see if you can see anything and just as i looked out the window the engine went as the problem came off i thought oh crap it's gonna kill me it's gonna cut me in two but it flew forward and then it came back and slapped the engine and then went underneath the prop tears a hole in the bottom of the plane then of course the cockpit gets all foggy and there's almost no sound your eardrums are pop the hole in the fuselage has caused an explosive decompression pressure the rapid change in air temperature and pressure creates heavy fog which obscures vision and starves the plane of oxygen so when you try to breathe it you end up getting light-headed and you can actually pass out it's a little disconcerting because the fog and it's quiet um you'd think jeez am i dead or not oh god finally when the fog cleared i saw out the window that we were in the right turn a right turn is taking the flight northwest towards the bering sea and so i naturally grabbed the yoke to try to level the wings jam no ailerons either it felt like the oak was in concrete it just felt solid as a concrete block at the moment that the propeller strikes the fuselage junior flight attendant victoria fredenhagen in the back of the plane springs into action after the explosions i wasn't sure what had happened but i got up and got the oxygen walk around bottle put that on i went to look out the right side and the passenger there said to me you don't want to look out the window and it was like oh there's no propeller on number four wendy croon and moose lauren are dazed by the incident but they are not injured i had fallen all the way back on my back so i jumped up and my first thoughts would get the passengers to the back of the airplane but i had a really bad feeling i stopped with one foot still in the air and i grabbed a hold of the cargo net and i was hanging on it and looked down at my foot and oh my heart dropped to my feet fear just ran through me i'm looking straight down at my foot over a hole straight down to the ocean i can actually to this day see the ocean that view the color the white caps the hole is more than half a meter wide that scared the crap out of me in the cockpit the pilots still have no idea what has happened [Music] jim and i got our mask on and um within seconds moose came through the cockpit door and said holy crap we just lost number four propeller jim he said what do you mean lost moose said it's gone it went it went away so he reached up and pulled the emergency shutdown handle on number four engine but james gibson has a more immediate problem the loss of cabin pressure with a jammed control column he can't descend to a lower altitude where there's more oxygen everybody calm down just a second jim saw that the autopilot disconnect lights were on and he reached over and turned the autopilot back on again the electra has two sets of control cables the manual cables are jammed but the cables for the autopilot seem to be working wings level and i personally thought that was probably one of the smartest things that anybody ever did in the history of aviation sending the tenth out the autopilot is now keeping the plane on a steady and descending course over the north pacific for the moment everything seems to be under control until there's a hole back there i can see straight through yeah right straight through the plane i saw the ocean and then they go wait a hole through the floor you go yes the hole through floor i wanted to yell at him he was like yes i saw a freaking hole in the floor get in the seat and put us gibson is flying fast over 200 knots he's down one engine and his control column is jammed he must find a way to slow down or his plane will rip apart pull power back to 2000. when his hand moved those throttles back and the horsepower gauges didn't move i boy i'll tell you what i said man i wish i'd have called in sick you know that's when i knew and well we all knew that boy this is really a bad situation this is about as bad as it can get the throttle cables must be cats son of a [ __ ] the pilots can't slow the engines the speed could tear apart the damaged plane it's also preventing gibson from descending as quickly as he'd like come on come on start 65 let's see if we can get turned around gibson instructs the autopilot to make a right turn back to cold bay it seems the autopilot's lateral control is also damaged and if we just cracked it to the right just the slightest bit the airplane would start immediately rolling into a rapid right-hand turn and it scared the living crap out of all of us and the only way to get it out of that rapid right-hand turn was to turn that control knob all the way full left and then it would just barely stop the right turn and just slowly bring the airplane back gibson has no way of steering his airplane he can't descend quickly and his emergency oxygen is running out the crew and passengers are flying straight out to sea with no way to return to safety in a plane on the verge of tearing itself apart through terrifying trial and error captain james gibson discovers what his damaged plane can and cannot do okay stable his autopilot has put the plane into a slow descent but turning is next to impossible reeve 8 is stuck at full throttle flying further and further from land clearing friday flight dispatcher richard huff receives the call at the reeve base in anchorage reeve eight had taken off out of cold bay prior to my coming to work and probably 45 minutes after i had gone on shift they called me hey unable to reduce speed is that you gear it's huff ah no we've done nothing remade understand no flight control confirm no no negative we got no manual control but uh autopilot vertical control kind of working uh approaching ten thousand feet dropping at ten thousand feet okay we got you it was the worst uh damage report i had ever had at our company the autopilot finally gets the electra down to ten thousand feet captain gibson activates the autopilot's altitude hold switch it works the plane holds at ten thank god it's now safe to remove your masks that's a whole lot better passengers are no longer at risk of hypoxia but gibson still can't slow down or turn back to safety you guys going back to cold bay uh we're uh we're working on it trying to figure out how to fly this thing everybody wants to know what's going on so i'm really busy talking on the radio and i'm watching jim try to overpower the autopilot or help the autopilot the autopilot won't turn the plane around gibson still can't budge his column to make a manual turn and i thought well hell maybe i can do that so i reached up and i grabbed the yoke and i just i moved it and it scared the living hell out of gym christ gary hold on me just about climbed out of his seat you know and i just oh i felt terrible but now at least we knew that we could overpower or help the autopilot so that meant that probably our control cables were not severed and that was that was really good news the pilots use their combined force to muscle the plane into a slow right bank they begin a long turn back to cold bay the wide turns will get the plane on course but won't provide the precision needed to land the aircraft being a 1950s vintage aircraft was not equipped with autoland type autopilots it didn't have the sophistication that would allow it to line up directly on an airport in auto land we can't land like this no chance in hell without manual control there's no way to land the airplane even if gibson beats the odds and manages to line up with the runway at cold bay he's traveling too fast to land good chance it would have gone off the end of the runway if we'd have landed at the 200 and some knots gibson won't be able to slow down he needs a longer runway dispatch rebate how long is that runway in uh king salmon about 9 000 feet king salmon airport is more than 500 kilometers northeast of cold bay it's further away but has a longer runway king salmon runway nine hundred feet long over moose if we land at 200 knots is 8 900 feet gonna do it no no not even clubs gibson considers a measure of last resort ditch the plane in the pacific dispatch rebate i may have to ditch in the water at bristol bay 350 kilometers from cold bay bristol bay is close to emergency rescue support but richard half is against gibson's plan this is the ocean and unlike a river it's got swells and no i was totally against the ocean ditching like the 1996 ditching of ethiopian airlines flight 961 gibson risks cartwheeling and killing everyone on board if he doesn't land perfectly rebate strongly advised land in bristol bay oh no kidding in anchorage richard huff proposes another risky plan flying northeast towards home base at anchorage airport anchorage international had two runways that were 10 500. plus all the medical facilities uh that were in the area made it a better a more viable operation dispatch considered flight direct to anchorage over flying to anchorage is risky the towering mountains rise to nearly 10 000 feet the 700 kilometer passage would take the crippled electra through unpredictable weather over the aleutian mountains if gibson encounters turbulence on route to anchorage it could cause more damage to his already vulnerable plane strongly suggest anchorage over dispatch rebate i heard you the first time and this will be my decision over [Music] moose we got enough fuel to get to anchorage uh yeah yeah we're good ward enough dispatch rebate confirm weather conditions in anchorage flight surface winds 260 degrees at nine knots at anchorage this thing's a damn tank we'll make it okay dispatch we are flying to anchorage roger rivet inbound to anchorage standing by by experimenting gibson has slowly mastered the damaged autopilot he delicately adjusts the lateral control and then adds muscle to the column forcing the plane on a new heading to anchorage okay stable don't touch a thing for now gibson has luck on his side there is no turbulence as they pass over the aleutian mountains but his engines are still stuck on full throttle in anchorage ground crews prepare for a disaster after four anxious hours reeve flight 8 approaches the airport from the west captain gibson carefully adjusts the autopilot and begins circling the airport his only hope is that he can somehow regain enough control to attempt a landing before running out of fuel the controls were just real stiff and all we knew was that as long as we tried to use the autopilot and manually helped then we could fly the airplane a little bit make some turns and a little bit of pitch control at reeve headquarters flight engineer john minton is called in to help the pilots find a way to land their plane i was walked through the scenario by the people that were already there and asked to help any way i could with my knowledge of the aircraft dispatch rebate hang on i got to get some controls back where i absolutely cannot land over roger riven we're working on that the electra has two separate flight control systems that work side by side but are completely separate from each other they have the autopilot and then they have manual so if one is damaged the other is there in this scenario the mechanical side was damaged and the autopilot side was not damaged minton considers the options his conclusion shocks everyone disconnect the autopilot see what happens all of us wanted to see if manual control of the airplane was an option and the only way to do that is take the autopilot out of the system and see if the normal manual hydraulic system was workable in any way shape or form breve john mitten suggest turn off the autopilot are you out of your [ __ ] mind if any of the manual flight cables were severed during the accident and gibson disconnects the autopilot they may be left with no control at all yeah we thought the airplane could possibly just go out of control and then if we couldn't re-engage the autopilot then we'd really be in for a thoroughly entertaining afternoon in what could be his last flight command gibson hits the autopilot disconnect disconnecting autopilot for him to put his thumb on that button and disconnect that autopilot was just about the bravest thing i think he thought he ever did in his life the plane remains steady with the autopilot disconnected gibson checks to see if his manual controls have loosened nothing they're still jammed jim immediately turned the autopilot back on again and by this time we were pretty depressed it was this was not looking good at all there was no way that we could have landed the airplane just using the autopilot it's just there just was not enough control the lives of the 15 people on board depend on the pilots getting more control of the plane but having spent hours struggling with jammed manual controls and a crippled autopilot captain gibson needs a rest gary i'm done you got to take it he was just done in and he said gary you take the airplane i'm going to take the braid the crew is exhausted and out of options then lintner notices something that changes the entire situation i look down at the autopilot and i suddenly saw that the autopilot was off it's it's turned off and i'm sitting here making turns with the airplane hell i've got a good three-degree bank going you know he's steering the plane without any help from the autopilot and i turned to jim and i said hey i've got control here what you know and man immediately he grabbed the yoke and the two of us got on it with the two of us hell we had pretty good control and that's when we said oh man this this is this is a whole different ball game now somehow the pilots have gained enough manual control to pitch the nose up and steer a course for the runway as long as we have manual control over the airplane without the autopilot and it would have been okay you give us three degrees of bank and one degree of pitch and we'll deal with the rest huh i don't know how but we got some control back coming in but gibson still faces one major problem it's a ten thousand foot runway but you can still run out of runway if you're going too fast he's traveling far too quickly to land captain james gibson is about to try landing his badly damaged lockheed electra the plane's four engines are numbered left to right the first three are stuck on full throttle gibson needs to shut one of them down to slow his plane huh we'll kill number one to offset the loss on number four no no no they shut down number one they shut down everything negative rebate engine number one now controls power generator for all hydraulics do not shut down number one the loss of uh number one engine and the uh probable loss of the hydraulic system would have caused the crash of the airplane okay moose kill number two we're gonna shut down engine number two [Music] their speed drops but not enough 185 knots it's too fast if gibson overshoots the runway he could kill more than his crew and passengers there's a residential neighborhood just beyond the end of the runway everything i had was crossed fingers toes eyelashes because this was a no kidding backed up against the wall situation that there was no fooling around lives were at stake on the ground and in the air gibson speeds towards the runway still unsure how to stop his plane once he gets there [Music] at 8 13 pm he risks it all and attempts a landing let's do this anchorage rebate ready to land runway six right rebate clear to land runway six right [Music] you might wanna go in the back for this wendy croon returns to the passenger cabin to make final preparations for landing i really had that strong to you know do my duty and get to the back to do so she must cross the gaping hole in the cabin floor i jumped across up onto the seats with my arms trying to hold on to the overhead bins trying to hold up as much weight as i could and i went about four rolls before i went down onto the floor and then crossed and got to the back with barely any control and too much speed gibson begins the approach shoes off place all sharp objects in the air sickness bags this too yeah [Music] approach flaps approach flaps gear down gear down the pilots pull back on their columns to raise the nose for landing seconds before touchdown they cross the foot of the runway 170 knots 50 knots faster than normal sink rate 800 feet a minute i'd never had to uh myself or watched anybody else try to land an airplane that fast they can do this they can do this news crews capture the attempt but at the last minute gibson realizes he's still going too fast and can't land safely son of a [Music] go [ __ ] [Music] we're good we're good when we made that first pass you could it was too fast and they they were not going to land and so it was exciting when the gear went down and it came back up that was good the airplane was very low above the trees as we were going up and around and you could see houses and people down in their yards the failed approach proves gibson may be attempting the impossible our problem was that we were just going too fast we were we're doing 170 knots all the way down gibson must find a way to reduce his speed by at least 10 knots but shutting down the remaining engines is not an option the electra's short wings get most of their lift from air pushed back by the propellers you can't just turn the airplane engines off and glide there was just too much drag from those large propellers and so the lift of the wing would be gone completely so the airplane would just fall out of the air with two engines at full throttle and too much speed to land gibson loops out to sea and begins a second approach rebate tower cleared for second approach runway six right here down get in [Music] planes pick up speed as they descend to reduce his landing speed gibson decides to start his second approach from a mere 800 feet he also makes a bold decision that will make a second go around impossible on touchdown he's going to kill the two remaining engines last chance guys 146 knots the plane hits the ground guide all engines shut down engines one and three once the e handles were pulled the airplane was committed there was no turning back with all the engines cut the plane slows down but there's a high price to pay it's the engines that provide the electrical and hydraulic power that controls the steering and brakes now we're hurtling projectile down the runway with uh no hydraulic control of the airplane well now isn't this something we got no control directional control at all on this airplane i mean we're essentially passengers now we've become passengers with front row seats aborting the landing is now impossible the plane speeds at 140 knots towards the neighborhood beyond the airport gibson has no hydraulic brakes all he has are emergency brakes and they don't have nearly as much stopping power overwhelmed by the speed of the plane the emergency brakes burst into flames [Music] now we're going off the runway we're definitely going off the runway we're just looking straight into that ditch and jim says brace yourselves boys brace yourselves [Music] there was no real emergency because we could sense that everything was good everybody's fine back here well there's of course adrenaline running at that point um it just felt it felt good i think it was it was just surreal because we were okay [Music] we're all good heck of a landing guys heck of a landing and as soon as i hit the ground one of the passengers come up to me and goes when's the next flight to seattle i'm looking at him like um i don't think you realize how bad the situation was i'm still amazed that they got it on the ground without hurting anybody or anything they didn't even put a scratch on the airplane we just sat there and watched them foam the airplane there was foam all over the airplane from the fire trucks and firemen and the airplane was reasonably okay passengers exit the plane but gibson has one last command before he releases his crew that's coaching ties boys jim said well boys i think we handle that like real true professionals i think we ought to get our hats coats and ties on for our departure after a six-hour ordeal captain gibson and his crew have landed a badly damaged plane and saved the lives of everyone on board the company was always telling us that we're a bunch of unprofessional [ __ ] i guess you can't probably print that but at any rate it's now up to ntsb investigator ron schleed to find out what went wrong the loss of a propeller in flight is a very serious event it it can lead to catastrophic accident has led to catastrophic accidents in the past though the revolution accident was not catastrophic it is part of a disturbing trend since 1965 there have been four cases of spontaneous propeller loss on the electra l-188 we had an airplane that nearly went into the ocean because a propeller came off so we needed to find out as best as we could what caused this accident in washington investigator dennis grossi reviews the cockpit voice recording to understand the challenges faced by the crew as they tried to land shortly after takeoff the flight crew detected the vibration that vibration continued on and until the propeller departed the aircraft damaging the fuselage causing a rapid decompression of the cabin a loss of engine controls and the uh limited flight control authority for schleid there are only two possible causes that can explain the loss of the propeller with fatigue crack or some other pre-existing damage would cause the whole propeller assembly to separate and that has happened before the other possibility is the gearbox the power gears that drive the propeller if there's a catastrophic failure there that can also cause the engine for the propeller assembly and gearbox to separate that has also happened in the past his team studies what's left of the damaged engine right away it's clear his investigation will be difficult the wreckage really didn't give us much of a clue uh because what we needed to look at was gone the propeller and the gearbox it was attached to are lost at sea the parts that likely cause the vibration are gone for good without them the case may be impossible to solve with no physical evidence to examine schlied's team studies the plane's flight data recorder hoping it can explain the vibration the flight recorder on this airplane was a very rudimentary recorder it records by a stylus scraping a metal foil and so it's not a very scientific thing compared to what we have today so we could not on the flight recorder determine where the vibration came from the electra has a history of engine vibration vibrations so serious it's been known to tear the plane apart at high speed investigators examine the rubber mounts designed to absorb those vibrations if they're worn down it could explain the accident but the mounts appear fine the investigation hits another dead end we could not determine even the probable cause in this case when you can't do that and have to say i don't know that's very hard for an investigator to say but there is one other question schlied hopes he can answer why was gibson's plane so hard to land in four other cases when an electra's propeller separated the planes landed without incident the loss of a propeller is not necessarily catastrophic it's designed to fly with only half its engines yet with three engines intact gibson could barely maintain control of his plane something made this case unique ntsb investigators examined the gash where the propeller punctured the hull doesn't look like any cables are cut the hole explains the decompression but not the complete lack of control it's only by taking a closer look from inside the cabin that they finally discover the root of the control problem the badly damaged cabin floor that buckling of the floor from the explosive decompression jammed the flight controls where the cables ran through holes in the floor structure the autopilot control cables and the manual cables were both pinched by the collapsed floor but because only the autopilot uses hydraulics to move the cables it can apply far more force on them than a human pilot this is why the autopilot was able to control the plane ever so slightly they were able to get the autopilot to move the control surfaces to make minimal corrections and keep the airplanes stable hey i've got some control here what but with the manual cable so badly jammed investigators wonder why the crew was suddenly able to regain enough control to land the plane a closer look at the pinched cables explains why they eventually came free looks like they saw their way out of this mess they kept pulling as hard as they could on the yoke pushing and pulling turning come on deep scars in the hull's joists tell the tale the pinched control cables gradually carved channels into the airframe they were actually cutting right into the metal during the long flight before they landed that gave the crew just enough control to get the plane lined up with the runway let's do this anchorage rebate ready to land runway six right dennis grossi believes brute force was only part of what made this flight exceptional i've listened to a lot of cvrs in in my 35 years with the ntsb and there's nothing that even comes close to this one and the crew was quite exceptional ready to land runway six right eight cleared to land runway six right gear down gear down 170 knots zinc great 800 feet a minute they were able to regain control of the aircraft and started descent which is extraordinary once in anchorage gibson resisted the temptation to land on his first approach son of a [ __ ] quite often when pilots are on approach and things start to go wrong the instinct is to get the airplane down and land it in spite of the conditions go around go around [Music] the captain showed extraordinary airmanship and and leadership gibson's last flight command may have distinguished him most cut all engines converted shutdown agents one and three then of course the decision by the captain to cut the power once they touch down you know that that eliminated the possibility of a go-around so he knew at that point that that this is it in 1983 u.s president ronald reagan recognized captain james gibson and his crew for their heroic landing you do what does it feel like when a propeller starts to come through the side of the plane well it was uh a few moments there that i wouldn't want to repeat sir it was exciting james gibson flew with reeve for six more years before retiring he died in 2010 gary lintner retired from reeve and professional flying in 1996 [Music] victoria fredenhagen left aviation and opened her own business in anchorage two years after their fateful flight moose lauren and wendy croon married revolution airlines folded in 2000 after 68 years of service [Music] you

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

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Id: _BgIJCvmNXY

Length: 43min 52sec (2632 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021