How 4 INCREDIBLE Pilots Saved 404 Lives | Northwest Flight 85

this is the story of northwest airlines flight 85 on the 9th of october 2002 a northwest airlines boeing 747 took off from detroit bound for tokyo's norita airport this was supposed to be another routine flight like any other that day but unfortunately for all involved that would not be the case as the hours took by the plane made its way across the united states and then it made its way across the bering strait seven hours into the flight the senior pilots retired from the cockpit to get some rest and the relief crew took over senior captain john hanson and senior first officer dave smith retired to the rest area the captain was in bed with a book and he felt the plane do something weird as the captain's interest was peaked the pilots in the cockpit recovered from whatever had happened sensing that something was wrong the captain started putting his uniform back on that's when the alert from the cockpit came through in the rest area there's this little alarm and it goes off if you need to get to the cockpit as fast as possible if there's an all hands on deck situation unfolding as captain hansen entered the cockpit he saw captain frank guy doing something that he did not expect to see he was struggling to fly the plane he could see that captain guy was deflecting the rudder to the right with all his might this is not what you expected to see when you're in cruise for some reason at 35 000 feet the plane had jerked to the left and went into a 40 degree left bank the pilots initially thought that an engine had failed but the indications in the cockpit told that their rudder was deflected to the left by 17 degrees no one had commanded this but yet the rudder was in the left heart over they were in a dire situation and they needed to declare an emergency but unfortunately they were in a dead zone between north america and asia this meant that their communications were too weak to reach any of the control centers in a bid to establish communication with the controllers on the ground the pilots contacted nearby northwest airlines flight 199 they were closer to alaska and relayed the fact that flight 85 was in trouble they needed to get this plane on the ground as soon as possible and the decision was made to divert to anchorage in alaska it was taking every bit of control authority that they had to keep the 747 from rolling over to the left they were using ailerons the top half of the rudder everything that they could do to keep the plane in the air now they had another problem to get to anchorage you needed to turn to the right but this plane and its current state could not make a right turn so they gently eased up on the controls and sent the plane into a left bank as they tried their best to keep the plane from spiraling out of control as half of the pilots struggled with the plane the other pilots were hard at work in the cockpit running through checklists trying to fix the problem but nothing worked the lower portion of the rudder was still stuck but the pilots did not really have a clear idea of what was happening their instruments told them that the lower rudder was deflected to the left but other than that information was scarce for all they knew the tail could be breaking apart and if that happened it would be game over captain hansen wanted to take over from captain gaib here's a quote from him if anyone's going to scratch my airplane i want it to be me as captain guy let go of the controls first officer mike fagan took over as the switch happened once in the captain's seat captain hanson was appalled at how poorly the plane was handling he had never felt anything like that before just keeping the plane level was physically exhausting you needed to basically stand on the rudder pedal to keep the plane in level flight that taxed the pilot so much that they could only do it for 10 minutes at a time so the captain and the first officer would take turns commanding full right rudder with no fix in sight the pilots got on a conference call with technicians on the ground they hoped that the techs on the ground would be able to fix the problem the pilots had two questions for them one do you know what's wrong with a rudder and two how do we get this jumbo jet on the ground unfortunately the ground techs did not have an answer for the pilots they were on their own it then dawned on the pilots that they would have to land the plane like this landings are relatively dangerous on a good day but today the slightest mistake would send the plane into a left roll and no one knew if the pilots could recover from something like that the pilots then realized that the more they slowed down the more the rudder deflected to the left in essence the more they slowed the worse the problem got now came the big hurdle for all of them getting the plane back on the ground the pilots chose to descend to 14 000 feet the air at 14 000 feet is thick which gave them a lot of control authority but also if something were to go wrong they would have enough time to attempt one recovery before the plane hit the water then another problem cropped up and the 747 rudder signals are sent to the nose wheel this is done so that you can taxi on the ground using the rudder pedals they do not know if the jammed rudder would send those signals to the nose wheel if it did they'd be off the runway in seconds the pilots decided that they'd used the tiller at the first sign of trouble think of the tiller as the steering wheel of the airplane but more importantly its inputs overrode the ones from the rudder as the plane lined up the pilots were using every trick in the book to keep the plane lined up with the runway they were now using asymmetric thrust to keep the plane under control this meant that they pulled back power on the engines on the right hand side and added power on the left hand side this had the effect of countering the roll caused by the rudder the pilots were now playing a dangerous game the slightest wrong move would send the 747 with 404 people on board crashing to the ground but the pilots using every bit of their skill kept the plane lined up with the runway and at long last the plane touched down on the runway but their ordeal still wasn't over the rudder was still deflected to the left and it threatened to send the plane off the runway the captain grabbed the tiller as they tried to keep the jumbo jet on the center line the captain would later say we weren't sure we were going to be able to keep the plane on the runway end quote but despite their concerns the plane came to a stop and everyone survived once on the ground the pilots finally got to see what was causing them all this trouble the router deflected to the left in fact once the plane was on the ground they could not get the router to budge even though the plane was on the ground to get the router to move they had to depower the entire hydraulic system before we move any further let's talk a bit about the rudder system of the 747 the design of the router system saved flight 85 you see the rudder system is split instead of having just one giant control surface it's split into two sections both sections can move independently had this been one rudder the pilots would not have had enough control authority to keep the plane upright against the force exerted by the rudder each portion of the router is operated by its own power control package the lower router which is smaller of the two had two actuators and the larger one on top had three this system is set up in such a way that both routers operate in unison and they are also fed by two redundant hydraulic systems these two hydraulic systems are housed in the same manifold a manifold in simple terms is kind of a housing for the hydraulic system this is done so that either of the two hydraulic systems could power the rudder should the other system fail tearing the system apart they found that the manifold of the lower power control module failed this meant that the piston that controlled the rudder could move more than it was intended to and thus caused the rudder hard over to the left the manifold was no longer stopping the piston from moving too far back they then turned their attention to why the manifold fractured and this meant putting the metal through a gauntlet of tests studying the cracks they were able to ascertain that they were fatigue cracks they sent the manifold and the entire assembly to the manufacturer for testing but since the piston of the control system was sticking out they couldn't test the unit as a whole so they decided to tear it apart and then test everything individually everything worked fine they even tested the metal that the manifold was made out of to see if it was up to spec it was there was no reason for this manifold to fail but just to be safe they asked all operators of the 747 to inspect the manifold for cracks but the thing was that you couldn't visually inspect them because before they cracked they looked fine so the manufacturer devised a test to use ultrasonic waves to test the metal the weird thing was that no other operator found this type of fatigue on any other 747 there are even more things that make this accident totally unique usually when something fails and there's an emergency the thing that failed is a part of something deep inside the airplane but in this case that was not the case as it was the housing or the manifold that failed causing all of this after the incident the 747 was fixed up and returned to service can we talk about the pilots for a second though flight 85 was a textbook example of crm in action they had four pilots and all four pilots took on a bit of the workload and then solved the problem at hand this could have gone so wrong and it was only their skill that saved 404 lives that day for their incredible flying the crew of flight 85 received the superior airmanship award the other thing that kept this plane from crashing was the split rudder had the rudder not been split this would have ended very badly how badly you ask well i have two videos on the 737s rudder issues that brought down two jets and almost brought down a third you can find the playlist in the description thank you for watching this episode of mini or crash investigation if you like the videos that i make do consider liking and subscribing it will really help the channel grow i will catch you guys next time stay safe you

Channel: Mini Air Crash Investigation

Views: 275,000

Keywords: why planes crash, air crash investigation, aviation saftey, plane crashes, northwest airlines flight 85, northwest airlines, flight 85, emergency landing, air crash ocnfidential, mayday, aviation video, aviation documentary, mentour pilot, aviation educational, 747 emergency landing, boeing 747 emergency landing, boeing 747, boeing 747 crash, aviation safety, aviation, theflightchannel, plane crash, safety, educational, air crash, runway, 747 crash, 747, boeing

Id: jLZERRijavg

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022