Flight 191's Nightmare Landing - Two Veteran Pilots Face the Wrath of Thunderstorms

a routine Landing ladies and gentlemen we are starting our approach to D turns into a sudden fight to the death you're going to lose it all of a sudden there it is a passenger jet mysteriously falls from the sky and Rockets towards a busy highway push it up push it way up Delta go around he's going to Clash a mysterious Force brings down a plane claiming 137 lives in the wreckage lies the one clue that can stop it from killing again [Music] August the 2nd 1985 Dallas [Music] Texas it's a very hot day even by Texas standards see you all tomorrow temperatures soore to 101° rain coming should cool things down a bit in the late afternoon William Maybury is heading home from work the day's heat and humidity are having an effect on traffic at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport DFW roughly the size of Manhattan DFW is the biggest airport in the world it's also one of the busiest the heat has triggered some afternoon thunderstorms at the airport creating a backlog of planes waiting to take off American 631 you are cleared for takeoff air traffic controller Jean skipworth is in the tower today he's been working there for 14 years with him is controller Mike Porter skipworth was not asking for help nothing seemed unusual other than the fact that we were starting to get busy and aircraft were starting to pile up one of the many planes heading towards skipworth's control is Delta Airlines flight 1 191 WEA 6,000 scattered to 1,000 scattered visibility 10 temperature 101 wind 101 101° yes sir Captain Ed Connors and first officer Rudy price are two of Delta airline's most experienced Pilots Second Officer Nick nasik is the other member of today's crew the crew is flying a 6-year-old l1011 TriStar the L 1011 is buil as one of the safest planes in the sky there are 152 passengers and 11 crew members on board they're scheduled to land in Dallas just before 6:00 in the evening good afternoon ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking hope you're enjoying your flight so far traffic is backing up at Dallas Al will be about 10 to 15 15 minutes late getting to the gate please let us know if there's anything we can do to make your flight more comfortable the delay bothers Chris Meyer he's a frequent business traveler who's in a hurry to get home to his family for the weekend I've been down in Florida Fort lardell for the last two weeks and it was a Friday afternoon and I was due to go home on flight 191 one of IBM's best known Executives is also on the FL Don Estridge led the development of the IBM PC he and his wife are traveling to Dallas for a family visit 963 turn right heading 620 on route from Florida to Texas Delta 1 191 will be in communication with several controllers you into Blue Ridge it'll be about Z every aircraft is guided along its FL flight path by a series of Regional Air route traffic control centers they direct each plane's speed and altitude 1 ner1 descend and maintain 10,000 join the Blue Ridge 010 radial and inbound we have a good area there to go through Captain Connor has some concerns about the route he's been given he sees a storm cell along that path and he doesn't want to fly through it well I'm looking at a cell at about a heading of 255 it's a pretty good siiz cell and I'd rather not go through it I'd rather go around it one way or the other I've had about 60 aircraft gr through this area out here 10 to 12 miles wide they're getting a good ride no problem well I can see a cell now about heading 2 40 when I can I'll turn you into Blue Ridge it'll be about the 010 radial 010 Roger we're going to hold you to that Captain in Connors gets his way he's given permission to fly around the storm once past it he'll line up for a landing on Runway 17 left I'm glad we didn't have to go through [Music] that Friday afternoons are a busy time at airports the afternoon rain is making this Friday even busier 23 ners down to 6896 the main priority for the controller on duty is to keep the incoming planes a safe distance apart he wants them at least 4 and 1/2 kilm from each other that distance allows enough time for the violent air turbulence behind one plane to die down before the next plane touches down right now Connors and price are getting too close to the plane just ahead of of them a corporate lar jet Delta 191 heavy turn left 10° reduce speed to 180 to put some distance between the two planes the controller asks the Delta crew to slow to 180 knots Delta 191 330 km an hour wico 10° flaps please you're listening to Dallas 105 FM it's a wet one out there folks so drive careful heading home along Highway 114 William mayy will soon be passing DFW flight 1 191 is now just 50 km from the foot of the runway ladies and gentlemen we are starting our approach to DFW please make sure your seats are in the upright position and your seat belts are securely fasten [Applause] the crew begins their final descent into the Dallas Fort Worth area attention all aircraft listening there's a little rain shower just north of the airport Connor now switches radio frequencies and contacts a local DFW airport traffic controller for approach instructions as the passengers and crew of flight 191 prepare for their Landing a deadly force takes shape in their path critical decisions and missed information conspire against them the crew will soon be engaged in a 47 second struggle which will become one of the most important moments in the history of modern Aviation August the 2nd 1985 the crew of Delta Airlines flight 191 has been skirting a line of heavy storms between Florida and their destination Texas third 30 km from the Dallas Fort Worth airport first officer Rudy price notices rain ahead we're going to get our airplane washed what we're going to get our airplane washed it seemed like the closer we got in the DFW the worse the weather got and we was turning it into the the rain instead of going around it and the pilots never said anything about the bad weather Delta 191 is still closing in on the lar jet ahead of it price and Connors need to slow down even further to put some distance between the two planes Delta one91 heavy reduce speed to 1 15 speed to 1 15 9 kilm from Runway 17 left Delta 191 is handed over to another controller Jean skipworth for Final Approach and Landing Tower Delta 191 heavy out here in the rain feels good Delta 191 skipworth tells the crew to expect a manageable crosswind of up to 15 knots winds 090 at 5 gusts to5 thank you sir first officer price will be the controls for the upcoming Landing pilots and co-pilots routinely alternate flying duties as flight 1 191 is coming into land William Maybury is just North of the airport he's caught in the same storm that price and Connors are just beginning to fly through before landing check landing gear down three green flaps slaps 33 33 green lights the crew suddenly notices that they'll be flying into more than a bit of rain lightning coming out of that one what there's lightning coming out of that one where right ahead of us 1,000 ft I'll call them out to you all right we're not getting any bad warnings from the weather or from other Pilots which we rely on as they come through it uh they they need to report to us and they do if they have turbulence or they have trouble on Final or ran into anything abnormal the L jet ahead of flight 191 lands safely Conor and price are now less than a minute behind without warning the intensity of the storm increases the l1011 is being pounded by a driving rain I knew we was getting ready to land but at the same time you felt the surge like the pilot was revving up the engine for something the plane's air speed is increasing for no apparent reason what's your speed price pulls back on the throttles to slow the plane down and maintain it at the requested 150 knots the plane is just 180 M from the ground you're going to lose it all of a sudden there it is then the plane drops rapidly it's as though an invisible force is pushing it to the ground push it up push it way up where up where up where the crew is pushing the plane's jet engines to their full power but can't get more speed or get the plane to climb so I pulled my seat belt tight as I could but but the same time you could hear a pin drop nobody was talking but I mean it got dead silence as suddenly as it began the crisis seems to end the plane stops falling and begins to pick up some of the speed Connors and price have been fighting for that's it but before the crew can take another breath the plane drops again rocking violently from side to side and then it dips wildly to the right and I just knew we shouldn't be that close to the ground that soon hang on to the son of about 2 km from the Runway it plows into a field and Rockets towards Highway 114 when we hit the ground it felt like you was in a car running over Road roll ties it was real bumpy the crew somehow manages to get the plane back in the air at that moment Jean skipworth catches sight of Delta 1 191 he's going to crash not a go round but it's too late the plan's engines slam into William maybury's car on Highway 114 he is killed instantly the plane hits the ground again north of the runway it's traveling more than 350 km an [Music] hour I must have caught sight of him just at the last millisecond and he C C wheeled into the tank in just an instant and then of course there was fire not a ball of fire but a wall of fire it seemed like it only a few seconds 5 Seconds at the most I don't know how long it was we was everything was stopped the resulting explosion is so powerful that the rear section of the plane is blasted backwards away from the fireball then all of a sudden you look up and it's just nothing there it's everything's gone you just see the whole big picture outside like the plane just opened up remarkably the tail section containing the the last 10 rows of seats is relatively intact people just thrown around on on the ground some were clothes on some without clothes on some were burned it was something that you can't describe unless you were there to see it it it is something that you will never get out of your mind help over here hang in there helps on the way then as suddenly as it had started the rain stops it takes firefighters less than a minute to get to the crash and when I arrived on the scene I truly believe that there wasn't anybody that had survived this plane crash cuz there was just Devastation everywhere what I had pulled up on at the time was the the wing section which is the portion of the aircraft that carries the fuel so there was a large amount of fuel and a large amount of flames the front of the plane has all but disintegrated I knew I had to get out there at the time I was a Stringer for Time Magazine worked with them on a part-time basis called their Atlanta headquarters for the support of the country they said one word go Firefighters need only a few minutes to get the Raging Fire under control they then turn their attention to pulling survivors from the plane uh it wasn't until the fire started to subside a little bit that I saw the tail section where there was some hope of some people surviving there were these two uh women that were walking through the smoke ladies clear the area get out of the way clear the area and it kind of surprised me so I knew that there was hope and that there were people out there only 27 people survived the crash I had seen death before as a medican Vietnam but it had never been aimed at civilians and certainly not on a mass casual situation and certainly not the suddenly I could tell how bad it was you could see and smell and feel the death we felt like we did everything that we could and we're just you know we're just pleased that there were survivors I was scheduled to sit on off seat 15a and I told him that wouldn't be no good cuz that was a non-smoking section I was a smoker so I had to be in back that probably saved my life Captain Connors first officer price and Second Officer nasik are killed so are five other crew members and 128 passengers IBM's Don Estridge and his wife are among the dead in the tower there was silence for probably 1 to two minutes of except for just an occasional transmission but basically it's just quiet and you just sit there stunned and wishing you could do anything to take it back this is a Monumental [Applause] crash investigators from the national Transportation safety board arrive at DFW determined to find the cause one of our field investigators would have been on scene trying to locate the flight dat recorder and the cockpit voice recorder which is um uh you know a very important part of the investigation investigators begin looking for evidence of mechanical failure they examined the wreckage for clues that the plane was not responding to the Pilot's command it's essential in any approach or departure accident to establish what the airplane's configuration was to to assure that it was not a factor in the accident everything was normal on this air C investigators turn their attention away from the plane and to the skies after any accident in commercial Aviation there are theories Galore a couple of them prevalent that evening first that lightning had struck the earthline secondly that it had been hit by a mini tornado there lightning coming out of that one where right ahead of us 15 different Witnesses including flight Crews report seeing lightning as flight 1 191 was descending towards the runway the investigators have to consider the possibility that flight 191 was hit by lightning lightning is always um something that that you have to investigate to Det determine the uh the possibility that lightning disabled some part of the airplane in 1963 a Boeing 707 was struck by lightning the lightning ignited the fuel in the plane's tank the plane crashed 81 people died there had been a handful of similar crashes since then key pieces of wreckage from flight 1 191 are taken to the NTSB lab in Washington [Music] DC bud laner is the investigator in charge of examining the wreckage as well as the data from the plane's cockpit voice recorder but sometime might be very difficult to find to to determine where the airplane might have been struck by lightning and where the exit point was lightning coming out of that one where right ahead of us if the plane was hit by lightning there would be evidence left behind a device called a static discharge Wick is attached to the trailing edge of an airplane's Wings it redirects static electricity into the outside air instead of into the plane where the charge could cause a fire if the plane was hit by lightning one of the pieces that would be visibly damaged is the static discharge Wick nothing there with lightning ruled out investigators go looking elsewhere they would soon discover the real culprit it had actually been caught on tape a Delta Airlines l1011 crashes after entering a storm near Dallas 137 people die investigators rule out mechanical problems and lightning as causes of the crash nothing there the ntsb's bud laner turns his attention to the plane just ahead of Delta 191 the corporate Learjet he learns that it was less than a minute ahead and flew through the very same storm after we had passed about 5 miles from the end of the runway we entered a rain shower what we thought was a light rain shower and it turned out to be the heaviest rain I've ever seen before or since in spite of the rain Rufus Lewis managed to land his plane safely on Runway 17 left when we broke out of the clouds we were high and hot so we had to use all of the runway at DFW airport we landed were able to turn off at the end of the runway so why was the much larger l1011 unable to land just moments [Music] later Delta 1 191 heavy reduced speed to to put some distance between Delta 1 191 and the Lear jet the controller had asked price to slow his plane several times when Lena plots the bigger plane's speed then down to 150 he finds that it was coming into land at 150 [Music] knots Delta 1 191 heavy reduced speed to 1 15 investigators consider the possibility that flight 1 91 had been traveling too slowly for a safe landing if you don't have a lot of extra energy you don't have anything to trade in case you get in trouble so uh a lot of times in adverse conditions the pilots they added another 10 knots for Mom and the kids Crews don't have to follow a controller's speed request if they think it's unsafe price did reduce his speed he knew this plane extremely well he had actually helped to rewrite the L10 111's operating manual if the captain decided did 150 knot was too slow they would have told the controller it was too slow and they wouldn't have flown it Lena consults the airplane's manufacturer and interviews other l1011 Pilots he concludes that neither the controller nor first officer price made any errors regarding speed Delta 1 191 heavy reduce speed to 1 15 This Plane should have been able to land at 150 knots speed to 1 15 Bud laner still doesn't know what slammed flight 191 into the ground but soon he finds the clues he needs on the plane's flight data recorder it logs every adjustment pilots make to the plane's controls the device also records external elements like temperature wind speed altitude and air pressure whatever Connors and were fighting there's a good chance it left its fingerprints on the flight data recorder this flight data recorder gave us several parameters we didn't have before engine power longitudinal acceleration and those kinds of parameters really enabled us to do a more indepth analysis the plan's data recorder has documented a combination of rapidly shifting winds then it shifts to a downdraft in a matter of seconds the plane was hit with strong winds from the front then from above and then from behind there you have it for Bud laner that sequence could only mean one thing a microburst a microburst is a violent shaft of air falling from a storm cloud back in 1985 few people knew more about encounters between microbursts and airplanes than John McCarthy if you're at the kitchen sink and you turn on the water and it goes straight down and it splashes out in all directions and that's kind of what a microburst is except that it is extremely bad news if you're an airplane flying through it at low altitude a plane first faces a strong headwind which lifts the plane Skyward then a downdraft which slams it towards the ground finally the microburst delivers its most dangerous punch the tailwind and you would get a rapid descent a loss of LIF and and a rapid descent towards the ground and easily crash the airplane a plane's wings need a steady flow of air moving over them that's what gives them their lift by inhibiting that flow the Tailwind reduces lift there's no better recipe for a microburst than the weather conditions at Dallas Fort Worth on the day of the crash it had been extremely hot all day and hot air rises when that hot air meets the cold moist air in the storm clouds it cools instantly and rushes violently back to Earth a Micro Burst it is a tiny thing meteorologically speaking compared to a a big storm or snowstorm or hurric and it's just a like a needle in a hay stack at its maximum strength it's it's no more than 2 miles across and it lasts no more than 15 minutes so if you look at that little space and time window it's very small and so the probability of hitting one is low the odds may be slim but planes do fly into microbursts in 1975 an Eastern Airlines flight landing in New York flew into a microburst it slammed the plane into the ground killing 113 people then in 1982 a microburst killed another 153 people when it struck a PanAm 727 taking off from New Orleans it was clear that 136 people on flight 1 191 had become the latest victims of a microburst investigators had their culprit unbelievable and thanks to flight 91's ADV Advanced Data recorder they could paint a remarkably accurate picture of It the Killer had essentially been caught on tape but what the flight data recorder doesn't explain is how such an experienced crew fell victim to a killer you're they were all trained to overcome when Lena compares the Pilot's actions to the actions of the microburst watch your speed he uncovers details of a fight to the death a fight that the Delta Pilots almost won lose it all of a sudden there it is he seemed to know what he was going to hit watch your speed the increase in air speed prompted first officer price to reduce power to his engines power that he would desperately need in just a few seconds you're going to lose it all of a sudden there it is when price and Connors entered the downdraft push it up they were less than 2 50 m from the ground the captain knew the characteristics of a microburst he'd obviously been given an introduction to windshire and microburst uh characteristics in his flight training when Connors and price encountered the microburst Tailwind there was very little they could do they had insufficient speed and altitude with which to maneuver if a pilot encounters a strong Tailwind at 3,000 M he can point his nose down and dive to pick up speed and generate lift it's called trading altitude for air speed but that trade wasn't available to price and Connors they were just 150 M off the ground when the Tailwind struck the only way for them to gain air speed was from their engin push it up way up Co pilot responds airplane stabilizes I can see that most Pilots would say well we're through with that and it's going to rain's going to stop we're going to land momentarily their efforts seem to pay off their air speed increases their plunge is halted but with flight 191 less than 150 M from the ground this particular microburst delivered the ultimate blow a fierce crosswind that forces their plane to bank dangerously to the right combined with the microbursts other winds the crew was defenseless toga toga is take off go around mode and what it means to a pilot in that regime of flight is L abandoned the approach we're no longer going to try to to land this airplane we want to do everything we can now to to survive the the wind condition that we've entered the skill and experience of the pilots were no match for this microburst it was too big its winds too powerful and unpredictable the entire fight lasted only 47 seconds the pilots of Delta flight 1 191 did their very best to recover from the situation and it didn't work out investigators were left with one perplexing question why had Connor flown into the storm in the first place prior to 1985 The Radars on board the aircraft were built to detect thunderstorms essentially heavy areas of precipitation they were not effective they wer not even designed to detect the microburst so those Radars were essentially useless at low altitudes for looking at the microburst phenomena microbursts are invisible but they generally emerge from storm clouds that's why Pilots are trained not to fly into storms if they see lightning it's a pretty good size cell and I'd rather not go through it I'd rather go around it one way or the other when I can I'll turn you into Blue Ridge it'll be about 01 radial 010 Roger Captain Connors was not a risk taker he was known as a cautious pilot I'm glad we didn't have to go through that this it's hard to blame the air crew their job is to avoid thunderstorms and this probably a forecast for thunderstorms every day at Dallas in the summertime which ones do you avoid and it's you know it's it's a very difficult problem earlier in the flight Connors had flown around bad weather investigators can only conclude that he underestimated the storm in his path at the foot of Runway 17 left when you're in a landing sequence at an airport like uh Dallas or Atlanta or Chicago and you see other airplanes ahead that are landing uneventfully you might get the impression that there's a thunderstorm there but I'm going to pass through it very quickly and and it's not going to be a factor for me airports like DFW have sophis icated systems in place to provide weather information to Pilots a thunderstorm at the end of a Runway is the kind of threat they were designed to identify but this deadly storm managed to foil those systems as flight 191 was approaching the airport the weather at DFW was changing very quickly attention all aircraft listening a little rain shower just north of the airport Captain Conners heard that part of the message but then he switched his radio frequency for his final Landing instructions the Delta crew never heard the last part of this message about weather ahead there's a little bitty thunderstorm sitting right on the final there was an observation 2 minutes before the accident that there was a wall of water at the threshold of the runway uh has been my contention that that information would have been very important to the flight crew radar readouts from the day of the crash indicate that the storm cell Connors and price flew into grew out of nothing in a matter of minutes this is 2 minutes before the accident the readout shows the beginnings of a weather cell at the foot of Runway 17 left this is 3 minutes after the accident then we have a new cell right at the uh threshold of the runway that wasn't evident in the previous pictures this explains why Rufus Lewis was able to land his Le jet the micr burst was just beginning to form when he was approaching the runway many people think that there was a huge vertical development that the pilots recognized and they just decided to go fly through it anyway and I maintain and I think the evidence proves it that that was not the case uh they didn't recognize this this new developing cell they did get into the storm beneath the cell but it was Heavy Rain they weren't worried about that then the hammer fell it was too late it's small it's the length of a Runway roughly and it doesn't last very long so it's something that can happen so quickly that many accidents have occurred because nobody knew it was there the storm arrived at the foot of Runway 17 left virtually unannounced but once there it attracted a lot of attention pilots on the ground as well as trained weather observers saw the worsening storm but they all saw it too late to warn the crew of Delta 191 the stor storm did show up on a radar screen at the Fort Worth air traffic control center but at the time of the crash the meteorologist on duty was in the cafeteria on a meal break if the flight crew had had any idea that there would be a severe event in front of them they would have missed the approach investigators conclude that the Delta crash was caused by the Pilot's decision to continue their approach Into the Storm a decision that was made because the the crew wasn't warned about the hazard in 1985 there were basic systems at airports that could detect dangerous winds but they could not reliably detect a microburst on the ground there were systems called low-level windshire learning systems that primarily looked for differences of wind speed around the airport and on the airport unfortunately these sensors tended to be spaced so far apart that a microburst could actually exist in between them and Escape detection or at leas detection in time to warn a pilot of the threat but in my microburst detection system to overcome this problem had been developed it was being tested in Denver and working very well what we found out is that adop a radar which is on the ground is incredibly effective in detecting micrurus in fact it can detect about 98% of of a micrurus conventional radar uses radio waves to measure precipitation inside a storm Doppler also sends out radio waves but by measuring the frequency of returning waves Doppler can also calculate the movement of the Winds inside a storm and if you look through the Doppler radar you see a part of it that's going away from the radar and a part that's coming towards the radar and if it's small it's absolutely a microburst it can be nothing else so it has what we call an unambiguous signature of a microburst which means we got it since Doppler radar could see a microburst controllers could use it to warn Crews of their presence the Denver research resulted in an important new system at airports terminal Doppler weather radar when the system detects dangerous conditions it relays a warning to air traffic controllers who can then alert Pilots flight 236 microburst alert white fin stay intention after the crash of Delta 1 191 the Federal Aviation Authority the FAA hurried to install terminal Doppler weather radar at high-risk airports Dallas Fort Worth was one of the first the domes containing the specialized radar are now a common fixture at major airports around the world but radar on the ground can't get the warning to the pilots fast enough we also have an issue of groundbased systems in that it takes time to communicate the threat to the crew the system has to detected on the ground it would Ty to go to a control position in the control tower and be relayed by voice to the pilot which can introduce a delay of 10 15 20 seconds which could be very critical planes also needed onboard microburst detection a team from NASA began developing such a system by flying into the most d dous microbursts they could find here we go take it ah by risking their own lives they would eventually save thousands of [Music] others Delta Airlines flight 1 191 is the latest in a string of crashes attributed to a microburst since 1964 microbursts were shown to be the cause of 26 accidents claiming more than 500 lives the public is unnerved politicians are demanding answers the killer has to be [Music] stopped the body count is building and this C this particular crash tipped the scales as far as the federal government was concerned the crash of Delta 1 191 showed that seconds count when planes encounter a microburst you're going to lose it all of a sudden there it is increasing alert times push it up could save more lives especially if a microburst detector was mounted right on the plane if you can provide the airplane with 10 15 20 seconds of advanced warning Pilots push the throttles up they build build air speed they build altitude they build energy it's like money in the bank by the time they get to the microburst during a recovery they can survive Aviation experts had to find a way to give all Pilots those critical 20 seconds to develop that technology they would embark on a high-risk unprecedented research project they would fly a 737 into the most severe microbursts they could find we did a very careful risk analysis of all the possible dangers that that could occur and initially you know the first reaction was you want to do what with an airplane you want to flight through a microburst in the summer of 1991 NASA modified a Boeing 737 and went hunting for microburst the idea was to identify onboard technology that could warn Pilots of a microburst in their [Music] path the Airborne solution brings detection right into the cockpit so the pilot sees exactly what's in front of the aircraft and when an alert is given there's no time to ground speed 234 the NASA researchers were testing three separate systems for detecting microbursts modified Doppler radar housed in the 737s nose a laser radar under its forward cargo bay and a sid mounted infrared device to measure changes in air temperature each of those systems was wired to Banks of computers in the plane's cabin a spotter on the ground could find a microburst and quickly direct the plane towards it Roger control 515 we're roll Ro on the roll CDR Master Control range range 45 miles ground Speed 2 40 here we go take it straight ahead need to come left about uh 10 15° well when you spot a Micro Burst it was all business it was how do we get there how do we get to the right altitude the right air speed the right position when to begin data collection so people were quite busy during these flights yeah it was exciting we we wanted to find them we wanted to penetrate them with every microburst the three onboard detection systems were put to the test researchers on the plane could instantly see which instrument was doing the best job of picking up the microburst ahead behind the flight deck we had pallets of equipment where the radar Engineers the laser Engineers the data recording Engineers could sit and ensure that each system was performing as expected ground Speed 2 3 4 de ahead maybe one Dee to the left let's go straight through this one here we go take it straight ahead we started with very very weak microburst again we had the groundbased radar telling us what we were about to go into so we started with with very weak microb birst gain experience then gradually worked up to stronger and stronger ones you would see the Rain Begin to Fall and you would feel a Sinking Feeling it'd be a little settling you a little like an elevator starting down few minutes here before we touch down what you see so any apprehension that the crew may have had initially about going through them was actually replaced later with joy at finding them here comes the center of the Target right now 242 on the ground speed wind's gone away look for a Tailwind watch lost some altitude there too there the wind's gone around the tail 10 knots good strong Dow drop in the middle of it just sucked 100 ft in almost no time at all saw good performance decrease too we were about 850 and we dropped a 750 beautiful the Langley researchers flew into dozens of microbursts over the course of their research the project proved that the forward-looking Doppler radar was the the only system that could consistently give Pilots Advanced warnings of a microburst ahead what we found was that the Doppler Radars could detect a extremely wide variety of microburst lightning coming out of that one if the crew of Delta 1 91 had a system to warn them of microbursts they could have boosted power to their engines and started climbing before they encountered it that might have given them the speed and the altitude which they sorely lacked when they began their battle with the storm the Langley flight tests had in effect tamed the microburst Menace after the NASA tests the FAA certified a doppler-based warning system for planes today forward-looking Doppler radar is standard equipment on commercial flights around the world the good news out of all of this tragedy is so many things have now happened from radar to groundbased systems to Airborne systems and especially to training for Pilots we think that microburst accidents are a thing of the past if there is one crash that we can look back on now and say this made things safer because we learned from it if was Delta 191 the changes made after the crash of Delta 191 have saved countless lives Captain Connors and first officer price lost their fight against a microburst but their struggle did manage to expose and disarm an invisible [Music] killer

Channel: Mayday: Air Disaster

Views: 113,189

Keywords: Delta Airlines, L-1011 Tristar, Mayday: Air Disaster, air traffic control, aircraft technology, airplane crashes, aviation disasters, aviation regulations, battle, elements, emergency protocols, flight incidents, high-profile air disasters, human error factor, nightmare landing, off course, passenger safety, rain, storm, subscribe, survivors

Id: ciOTc_N0Bbk

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023