How A Stone Crashed A Passenger Jet | Trans International Airways Flight 863

this is the story of trans international airlines flight 863 on the 8th of september 1970 a few pilots arrived at the operations room at jfk international airport at 2pm on that day they would be flying a dc-8 from jfk in new york to washington dulles international airport on a repositioning flight the dc-8 was to take off from runway 1-3 right with the first officer flying the plane and by 404 pm flight 863 was cleared for an immediate takeoff the dc-8 lined up and the engines rammed up to take off power as the plane picked up speed it started to nose up the pilots tried to bring the nose down at this point the plane was 1500 feet down the runway and then the tail struck the runway the dc-8 dragged its tail along for 1200 feet as it struggled to get airborne when flight 863 was 2800 feet down the runway the plane finally took off but they weren't out of trouble yet pilots watching the dc-8 taking off noticed something strange the aircraft was in an unusual nose-up attitude in the cockpit the crew were bombarded with stall warnings and stick shakers they knew that a stall was imminent if they didn't act fast meanwhile the plane climbed to 300 feet it was now passing 60 degrees of pitch some say was 90 degrees but with the nose up so high the plane couldn't keep itself in the air flight 863 rolled a bit to the right and then the left wing and the nose dropped as the dc-8 fell from the sky like a stone the resulting fire engulfed the plane none of the 11 people on board survived the aircraft that had been in the accident november 4863 tango wasn't even two years old in the grand scheme of things that's practically brand new because of that this plane was in great condition the engines were all fine the pitched from compensator had been replaced in 1969 but other than that the plane was in perfect flying order there was no reason that they could see for this perfectly functioning airplane to literally drop out of the sky if you've been a long time viewer of this channel the crash of flight 863 might remind you of another video that i did pan am flight 799 link on your screens right now in that incident the pilots forgot to extend the flaps on takeoff for a few complex reasons but when they examined the wreck of flight 863 the investigators found that the plane was perfectly configured for takeoff the flaps and slats were out the plane was trimmed correctly the weight of the plane seemed to be within bounce nothing seemed wrong when they were examining the wreck they came across something strange the spar web access door on the right hand stabilizer had been punctured by something the spar web access door is the small axis hatch on top of the horizontal stabilizer which gives technicians access to the innards of the stabilizer the horizontal stabilizer at the back of a plane looks like one contiguous piece of metal but it's not it's divided up into the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator they're two separate pieces joined together by attachments and linkages with a small bit of space between them on the face of the elevator that faced the hole they found gouges and scratches in the metal and a few tiny stones in the tail assembly they found small tar-covered stones one to two inches in diameter those weren't supposed to be there more interestingly they found trace amounts of asphaltic material around the hole that had been made in the access door of the horizontal stabilizer this led the investigative team to consider the possibility of foreign debris in the tail section i mean they had every reason to they had found asphaltic stones in the tail section the mysterious hole in the spar web access door and the right hand horizontal stabilizer had some asphaltic residue around it the question is if something did get in how would it affect the aircraft the best way to find out was to actually try it the investigators took a stone and placed it in the space between the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator where they had seen the gauge marks when they commanded a nose up the leading edge of the elevator moved downwards taking the stone with it when they commanded the elevator to return to its neutral position the stone caused the elevator to jam it would not move as more and more force was applied to move the elevator they saw that the extra force was causing the metal to deform where it made contact with the stone when they compared the results of this test to what they had seen on flight 863 it was a match something hard and irregularly shaped had been jammed between the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator but there are still so many questions to be answered where did the stone come from how did it get in what caused the hole in the access door the investigators found very similar stones all over the airport near taxiways and aprons which flight 863 had used when the accident happened there was some resurfacing work going on and they were sweeping the runways and the taxiways to keep them clear of debris but they were unable to keep this debris away from all the paved areas so wake turbulence or jet exhaust of another plane could have deposited the stone right at the junction where the horizontal stabilizer met the elevator in fact they had seen other jet aircraft blowing stones like these around the airport when the pilots commanded a nose up the back edge of the elevator would move up and the front would move down this created a gap for the stone to enter once the takeoff run began the stone would have been subjected to a lot of force because the elevator itself was under a lot of aerodynamic force this caused the stone to dig into the metal in the tail assembly creating the scars that the investigators saw in the wreckage moreover as the plane began to rotate too soon the pilots began to increase the nose down input this caused the elevator to move in the opposite direction putting even more force on the stone now this stone is sandwiched between the front section of the elevator that's trying to push it out of the way with all of its might and the spar web access door eventually the pressure got to be too much and the stone punctured through creating a hole in the spar web access door the stone then fell out during the impact sequence as weird as this explanation is this is completely plausible this is also something that you just can't train for there's no stone stuck in elevator checklist in situations like these the decisions that you make on the fly can be the difference between life and death in the case of flight 863 the decision making also played a part in the crash things started going wrong when they were at 80 knots the plane started to pitch up this was very unusual by the time they hit 91 knots the tail was dragging along the runway these are very clear indications of something being very wrong the pilots had more than enough time to reject the takeoff why didn't they when things started to go wrong the captain should have intervened and rejected the takeoff but he didn't why when looking at takeoff rejection procedures they were able to see that pilots were conditioned to believe that the primary reason for initiating a rejected takeoff was an engine failure they were told that rejected takeoffs were super dangerous in essence they were conditioned to not reject the takeoff if an engine didn't fail quote the board believes that the previously mentioned emphasis in flight manuals and training procedures on engine failure is misleading and that the emphasis on the dangers of rejected takeoffs tends to prejudice the pilot against the use of that procedure end quote the second thing is that the trans-international airways manuals weren't really specific on the procedure that the crew had to follow to reject a takeoff especially when the first officer was the one flying in fact the captain said quote let's take it off signifying his willingness to continue the takeoff but he made that call on his own he did not know how the aircraft was behaving he didn't have any feedback from the controls the last factor that i want to touch on is how their prior experiences had made a takeoff rejection not even a priority in their minds jfk was and is a busy airport when they were departing the tower gave them an immediate takeoff because there was another plane on final so they wanted to get out of there as fast as possible so that might have nudged them to continue the takeoff instead of just rejecting it unfortunately these guys were hit with an emergency out of the blue and they didn't have a way to know that there was a stone stuck in their right elevator but once they had left the runway they didn't stand a chance what's your take on all of this did you even know that something like this was possible let me know in the comments below thank you for watching this episode of mini air 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

Channel: Mini Air Crash Investigation

Views: 317,605

Keywords: trans international airways, why planes crash, air crash investigation, air crash confidential, aviation safety, dc8, dc8 crash, the stone that crashed a passenger jet, avaition documentary, history, educational, JFK international airport, JFK, new york, new york air crash, DC8 accident, air crash in newyork, flight simulator, theflightchannel, air crash reconstructions, plane crash in new york, air crash, mini air crash investigation, trans international DC8

Id: 4RsO5nePc-s

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021