The Deadliest Aviation Accident In US History | Mayday | On The Move

in 1979 chaos when the faa grounds every dc-10 in america you can imagine if one of your real workhorse airplanes is grounded it's a terrible situation the reason look at this american airlines flight 191 i'm losing it all right all right come on come on we've only got about 300 feet above the ground what do you got as investigators search for evidence one of the pushing faults in the worst air disaster in u.s history split right in two there's the bolt this is a fracture point they face intense media pressure to identify the cause some very crucial photographs showed the aircraft on its final fatal plunge the shocking images may finally explain we need to see those slams why 271 people died seconds after leaving the ground [Music] hey [Music] any updates on the weather surface wind 20 degrees at 22 knots nothing but blue skies on a friday afternoon the seasoned crew of american airlines flight 191. makes final preparations for takeoff spoilers are from chicago's o'hare airport captain walter lux was scheduled to have the weekend off but is covering for a friend this crew was a very experienced crew the captain had approximately twenty two thousand hours of flying time of which about three thousand hours were in the dc-10 so he was a very very experienced pilot in the aircraft the dc-10s three engine layout makes it one of the most recognizable passenger jets on the runway [Music] they're being flown by almost every major airline the dc-10 was a very popular airplane it was one of the first jumbo jets so the airlines were able to put twice as many people on board the airplane and only feed three engines instead of four so it was much more economical for them because they could eliminate a lot of flights and still carry the same number of passengers american 191 good afternoon taxi into position on runway 32 right american 191 thank you to action hold runway 32 right flaps and slats to 10. takeoff and landing are the most crucial and most difficult and busiest times in the cockpit it's the friday before memorial day there are 258 passengers on board for the flight to los angeles on this flight a live feed from a video camera mounted in the cockpit allows passengers to watch the takeoff from the cabin it's a new feature for american airlines it was simply showing the runway and what the pilots were seeing as you took offer as you came in for a landing so it was just like a movie for the passengers american 191 you are clear for takeoff american 191 underway you have control i have control runway clear clear okay setting take off thrust here we go apply take off power you've got three engines pushing you down the runway sharing the pilot's view from the cockpit is a thrill for many on board at 304 pm the plane is seconds away from lifting off the one you accelerate to v1 which is the the speed beyond which you can no longer abort the takeoff so you have to keep going you have to take off no matter what happens rotate [Music] a few seconds later you reach rotation speed this is when you let the pilot would lift the nose the uh the front wheel would come off the runway [Music] damn there's the turbulence not too rough did you see that i've lost power to my side the captain's instruments suddenly go dead looks like we've lost number one and he's lost power from the left engine but the plane is already airborne you have to keep going you have to climb out and if there's something wrong with the airplane even if the problems are critical your best hope is to keep going to climb contact atc and come around and land somehow somewhere look at this look at this equipment i need equipment you blew an engine the dc-10 should be able to climb with only two engines these multi-engine planes are specifically designed to take off with one engine out they're designed to climb out at a brisk greater speed and to climb to a safe altitude with one of the engines missing pilots are trained to cope with this kind of emergency first they need to get as far from the ground as they can altitude is critical there's a saying that pilots have the three things you need are altitude airspeed and an idea they put their plane into a steeper climb forward speed drops if you have room to play with if you have the altitude now you can look around and try to figure out what went wrong and try to institute some corrective measures back into what runway go right go right the plane is banking sharply to the left it's only 325 feet from the ground they were applying full right air on because the left wing was going down and by applying full right aileron what you're doing is trying to lift that wing back up that has gone down he might try to turn the ailerons the other way harder and if that still doesn't work something's clearly wrong i can't hold it american 191 heavy duty he's not talking to me losing power from one engine should not be causing the plane to bank passengers have a frightening view of the ground below what's going on the pilots can't get the altitude they need and they're banking further and further to the left go right come on come on 300 feet we're losing altitude the cockpit camera gives passengers a glimpse of their fate but they are not the only ones whose lives are in danger a trailer park just north of the airport is home to thousands of people oh god and the plane is heading straight forward witnesses on the ground can clearly see flight 191 flying on its side we're still turning level baby level race well certainly would be a very very scary thing um you would certainly know that you were about to die [Music] the dc-10 crashes into an airport hangar at the edge of the airport the full load of fuel instantly ignites dc-10 with 271 souls on board has gone down northwest of runway 32 right it only got about 300 feet above the ground and it traveled maybe 4 600 feet or so beyond the end of the runway before it crashed into a field as soon as we pulled out the station we could see the column of smoke and as of course as we got closer and closer it was heavier and you could see how big this site was less than a minute after takeoff there is almost nothing left of flight 191 everything was was smoldering and i remember seeing pieces of the aircraft that were very recognizable such as the landing gear and i remember seeing one of the engines also rescuers find a horrifying scene you saw what was recognizable as torsos body parts it just brought back the human element and you realized and thought about the people who were on board as they begin assessing the full scope of the disaster they have very little hope that anyone has survived american airlines flight 191 has crashed just short of the trailer park beside chicago's o'hare airport the dc-10 has also obliterated a hangar beyond the runway there were some distinct odors jet fuel certainly that was that was the overpowering odor and then the eerie quiet i remember once the fire is under control the search for survivors can begin but as you walk the scene it was it was pretty obvious pretty quickly that there were no survivors it was very very frustrating to realize that no matter what your training was there was nobody there that you could help all 271 people on board are dead two workers inside the hangar have also been killed it's the worst aviation disaster in u.s history a lot of people saw this happen [Music] let's see what they could tell us the national transportation safety board must now figure out what went wrong on flight 191 this is a breaking news special report good evening an american airlines dc10 crashed just after takeoff this afternoon from chicago's o'hare international airport this is a kind of accident which unfortunately really grabs the imagination of the public and can do so much to cast a stain on the reputation of an airline of an aircraft on air travel in general thousands of people fly aboard dc-10s every day if there's a floor in the plane investigators need to find it before more people are killed the stakes were very high for the ntsb to get this investigation right the airlines wanted the public to understand that this was fundamentally a safe aircraft they are eager to hear from the many people who saw the crash especially those with the best view controllers in the tower look at this look look at this the controllers reveal that flight 191's left engine didn't simply fail the engine fell off the plane just after they lifted off it's not far if you were sitting on the left-hand side of the airplane what you would have seen was the number one engine on the left side rotated up and flipped back and disappeared behind you did you see that that's the last thing an airline passenger wants to see these engines are actually designed to go back up over the wing in case of failure so that they will miss the tail as they go by and not cause damage to the tail section they will go over the tail the engine has landed 760 meters from the end of runway 3-2 right the team scours the tarmac for any pieces that came from the plane how's the dc-10 lose an engine the smallest piece of evidence could be of vital importance never seen anything like this that is not supposed to happen the engineering is supposed to be so robust that that will not occur so when that happens you'll have the undivided attention of everybody involved in investigation because that's a big deal in the entire history of commercial aviation there have only been a handful of similar incidents but concerns over the safety of the dc-10 are not new this is the third major accident for the plane in the last five years there was a series of fatal accidents that were very high profile in the news and the name dc-10 kept appearing time and again in headlines led the public to wonder what was going on with this airplane in 1972 american airlines flight 96 lost its rear cargo door shortly after takeoff from detroit the dc-10 was at almost twelve thousand feet when the door blew out causing an explosive decompression that severed essential control cables the pilots were able to make a successful emergency landing saving all on board two years later the 346 people aboard turkish airlines flight 981 were not so lucky they all died when their dc-10 crashed into a forest in france after suffering a similar cargo door failure public confidence in the airplane was fairly low at this point and a lot of people would not fly on that airplane they would book another trip or book another airline to stay away from the airplane they say if it's a dc-10 put me on another flight i don't particularly like flying dc-10s but you know it's the only flight we can take so we take it investigators desperately need to know how an engine fell off a plane carrying 271 people they search the charred debris for the plane's flight recorders you've got a plane that's as destroyed on impact as this plane was the data from the uh from the recorders can be essential because that really is your only source of information the team is able to recover both black boxes but the recorders are heavily damaged it will take time to analyze the data what you got the investigative team soon makes another discovery it's one of the pushing bolts split right in two it could prove to be crucial they found a bolt that had broken and the question that was raised was did this bull break before the accident and cause it or did it break as a result of the accident the left and right engines of the dc-10 are mounted to the wings through a rigging system known as the pylon the bolt found on the runway is one of the few holding it in place the badly damaged bolt was found closer to the start of the runway suggesting that it may have been the first thing to come off the plane so what do you think the investigative team believe they have found the culprit this would explain it the ntsb is under enormous pressure to explain how an engine could simply fall off a widely used passenger jet two days after the crash they hold a news conference to announce that they found the cause a broken bolt there's the bolt there's a nut still attached to part of the boat this is a fracture point well i arrived at the scene of the investigation and it was a press conference going on at that time in which the vice chairman of the safety board was speaking and he had just concluded michael marks is a metallogist with the ntsb what did you guys say about the bolt we said this is it this is why the engine came off he's an expert in fractures and failures of airplane parts it was related to me that he had indicated that a bolt that was found on the runway was involved in the engine separation tell me you have more evidence than that when i visually looked at it i could see nothing on the bolt that would indicate anything out of the ordinary which all i could do is say this bolt didn't have any pre-existing cracking on it or have anything that would indicate that it had a weakness in the structure this thing broke when it hit the runway not before so not exactly our smoking gun we need more information and to announce that you basically have some kind of cause for that engine separation without really looking at it it was not a good idea to come out with this at that particular time and so more caution was needed okay look we've got to forget about the media and focus on the evidence it turned out that it didn't cause the accident but going in you don't know what is going to turn out to be important and what's just a red herring the confusion at the press conference only increases the pressure there's no room for any more mistakes for now the team can only study the wreckage for clues they hope there is enough of the plane left to help them make sense of what happened hold on let me see that okay good anything from the main crash site goes over here anything from the runway any engine or wing parts goes to that side well my first priorities would be to look at the actual parts the actual separation where is it that this tank broke this is definitely part of the pylon i never seen one break like that the pylons are mounted under the wings each one is strong enough to suspend a 5 300 kilogram engine the pylon is designed very well i mean it's strength-wise so it basically could take a lot of load much more load than you would normally see in the course of the airplane life the pylon gets its strength from two internal bulkheads one forward and one aft these bulkheads also provide secure points of attachment ensuring that the engines are firmly fixed to the wings it's also designed to have multiple load paths so that it's what they call fail-safe design it seems incredible that a pylon one of the strongest parts of the plane could have broken perhaps the fail-safe design is flawed if so it could be just a matter of time before another pylon breaks in mid-air any idea what happened i need to see the rest of the pylon as some investigators search the wreckage near the airport for the rest of the broken pylon others are finally able to listen to the cockpit voice recorder it should reveal if the pilots had any indications of a problem as they were taking off okay go ahead american 191 thank you taxing hold runway 32 right flaps this last attack the taxi and takeoff roll are perfectly routine american 191 underway there is no indication the pilots were having any problems okay setting take off thrust here we go sounds pretty routine so far the one rotate [Applause] damn is that it one of the tricky things about this accident from investigators was that the nature of the damage was such that the cockpit voice recorder itself was rendered inoperable so that was a big loss of of clues the voice recorder was powered by the left engine damn once it fell off the recording stopped thanks about the last thing they heard on there was just damn and that was the end of the recording and that told them absolutely nothing they may never know what happened in the cockpit after the engine fell off the flight data recorder is also nearly useless because of the extreme way the plane was flying a lot of the data makes no sense this isn't gonna help us but at the hangar there's been some progress investigators have recovered all the pieces of the pylon michael marx may now be a step closer to figuring out why it broke apart now i had an indication that maybe that this is this is the area that we're really should be looking at so in doing that you needed to get more detailed inspections of it i needed to get it to the laboratory back in washington dc investigators also examined the plane's history for anything that might relate to this catastrophic failure john golia spent nine years as a senior maintenance expert for the ntsb instantly if we know we had an engine fault enough you're going to go right for the maintenance records you're going to go right to the history of the airplane they had the engine out at the end of march eight weeks before the accident the left engine was removed for servicing anytime that you have an airplane that's been into maintenance uh just before a crash that also raises all sorts of warning flags all sorts go down to tulsa see what they did if you have an investigation that involves maintenance you don't go inside the hangar you don't follow that trail you're going to miss some issues why the pylon broke is not the only question that needs to be answered damn i've lost power to my side looks like we've lost number one two of the dc-10s three engines kept working the plane had the power it needed to keep climbing and then get back to the airport in fact you could lose a second engine shortly after i left off and you would still be able to power the aircraft around but somehow experienced pilots weren't able to fly this plane after losing just one engine with 273 people dead after an engine fell off a plane the faa makes a drastic decision on june the 6th 1979 the agency grounds every dc-10 in the united states 138 planes in total well you can imagine if one of your real workhorse airplanes is grounded disrupting flights inconveniencing passengers generating headlines it's a terrible situation you spend 100 million dollars for an airplane you can't leave it sitting around very long it's costing you a lot of money every day to have that airplane on the ground all foreign-based dc-10s are banned from entering u.s airspace the pressure on investigators mounts as the effects of america's worst air disaster spread across the globe [Music] investigator michael marks believes the shattered pieces from the engine pylon may explain why flight 191 fell from the sky hey look for yourself see that had to happen before the crash i just don't know why when looking at the after bulkhead in detail there was a one very puzzling thing a close examination reveals a crack in the metal that clearly developed slowly over time it's a telltale sign that the pylon bulkhead was already damaged before the crash you can see where it spread all along there the crack that michael marx finds runs along the top edge of the aft bulkhead the cracks were consistent with a fatigue phenomenon or a cyclic behavior a crack extending from repeated loads each time the load occurs you then have an extension of the crack the microscopic examination gives marx another clue a dent on the pylon bulkhead at exactly the point where the crack began there was also a deformation that was on one of the fractures at that time was not absolutely sure what it all meant because it just showed a deformation looks like something hit the pylon i'm just not sure what or when okay i'll see what i can find take notes on everything got it the information is available it's on the hangar floor it's in the minds of those people we just have to ferret it out investigators arrange to watch as another dc-10 undergoes the same maintenance that was performed on flight 191 just weeks before the crash can you take me up and show me how the engine's mounted we're going to talk to the to the people involved most likely it's going to be the maintenance personnel and we're going to ask them pointed questions you know on what have you done if you've done this job before what kind of problems did you encounter did you follow the paperwork to the letter religiously step one step two step three they found procedures that were not in the manual they found procedures that the manufacturer didn't recommend be performed to save time the airline has modified a key maintenance procedure a wing-mounted engine on a dc-10 is a 24-hour adventure which is extremely long so there's a lot of pressure on it getting whatever is broken repaired and getting the airplane back in the sky the normal procedure for servicing an engine involves removing it from the pylon and leaving the pylon attached to the wing there are hundreds of connections to be undone procedures from the manufacturer were deemed to be too time consuming and they could do it faster better cheaper so they were deviating from the procedures the quicker way involves taking out just three bolts the engine is removed from the wing while still attached to the pylon it saves about 200 man hours of labor it was easier the attach points from the pylon to the wing were accessible the attach points from the engine to the pylon were much more difficult to take apart and put back together removing's not the issue it's the attempt to reinstall well stop is where the problem comes from left a bit maneuvering the pylon into position with an engine attached to it is a tricky procedure trying to put the engine and the pylon back together some 13 000 pounds for the engine and 2 000 pounds for the pylon it's not easy they were using the forklift and this forklift is not very manageable it cannot be finely controlled as far as the altitude is concerned the minimum movement on the forklift was like something in the order of a quarter of an inch and we're talking about trying to fit something together that might be in the order of thousandths of an inch whoa stop stop so you get just slightly the wrong angle and you get too much pressure on it and you're going to crack those fittings i'm sure they didn't realize that how quickly they could get in trouble doing it the way they were doing it i think i know what happened a possible explanation services take her now for the mysterious dent found on the pylon from flight 191 the team in tulsa calls marks pretty good they describe how the maintenance crews struggled to fit the pylon attachment into the mounting bracket or clevis and then it all came together just like a bolt of lightning the clevis itself had produced this deformation that was on the fracture marks concludes that on the accident plane the clevis must have slammed into the top of the pylon bulkhead as the engine was being reattached the impact could have started the crack that led to the pylons failure and to the crash itself the maintenance people that did this operation which cracked the pylon probably didn't hear anything and bang or crack or anything like that okay bring her up we call it workaround so they work around the manual to get the job done quicker but the process never gets the proper vetting if you will review from engineering from the manufacturer and sometimes those alternate methods have unintended consequences over the next eight weeks each time the plane took off the stress that the massive engine put on the pylon made the crack grow larger the engine is not only imparting a thrust load but it's also imparting a sideways load so each time you have this load it breaks a little bit more and more and more it was only a matter of time before the pylon snapped and the engine fell off so the process was flawed and the people made adjustments to a flawed process to try to make it work and collectively that is a recipe for disaster how long have you been putting the engines on this way not sure but every airline does it even more worrying the mechanics at american airlines are not the only ones cutting corners the airline shared processes and since this engine change was so time consuming and costly they were all looking for a better way of doing it faster better cheaper way to do it and so when one would discover it a process to use that maybe made the engine change go quicker uh the others were very quick to adopt it and that's exactly what we see here we need to get the entire fleet inspected for this it is now clear why the engine fell from the plane but what happened after that is still a mystery flight 191 could have landed safely with one missing engine instead 273 people died in a horrific crash the plane was completely flyable it was in bad shape it lost an engine it lost several critical systems but it was still airworth and was still able to fly what happened in that cockpit the crash of flight 191 has a devastating effect on the entire airline industry it was a huge economic problem for the airlines because their major airplane was now on the ground and they couldn't fly it and of course i think it had a big impact on the public as well have you seen this so why weren't the pilots able to save their plane after losing one engine a chance photograph taken just before the crash may provide some answers there was certainly one very famous photograph that was published in many newspapers of the aircraft in a semi-inverted position almost ready to strike the ground everyone saw this picture i want you to track down all the pictures you can get them blown up i want to see those wings you got it these photographs that can do so much to horrify the public can have a real use for the accident investigators by examining photographs taken just prior to the crash they might be able to tell whether the pilots made some mistake when they configured their plane for takeoff flaps and ailerons looked fine by blowing up and zooming in on the leading edge of the wing the aircraft investigators were able to determine what was going on it's that hydraulic fluid if the fluid leaked from the plane's hydraulic system it might explain why the plane was so hard to control sometimes the crucial element in aircrash investigation can be some very small subtle detail from which everything else can devolve several of the dc-10s hydraulic lines run along the leading edge of the wing take a look at this it's the area that was damaged the most when the engine broke free we need to see those slats american 191 thank you action hold runway 32 right flaps and slash to 10. the plane's slats are extended before takeoff they're essential for providing the lift needed to get the plane airborne the slats are on the leading edge of the wing and when you deploy the slats they move out forward so the air has a longer distance to go and therefore is moving faster and it creates more of a lift a vacuum above the wing if the hydraulic system controlling the slats failed it could explain the plane's loss of control investigators discover that while all the slats on the right wing were extended for takeoff some on the left wing were not it's a configuration that's normally impossible you have one wing that is flying and the other wing that isn't and when you have a wing that's flying in one that isn't the one that isn't flying dips and the one that is flying continues to fly which means the airplane goes into a row they conclude that the engine hit the wing with enough force to rupture the hydraulic lines the fluid keeping the slats extended on the left wing would have drained quickly without fluid some slats on the left wing retracted causing that wing to lose lift the plane began to roll the actual stalling speed was 124 knots for the airplane in this at this weight and configuration i'm losing it the fact that this slat had retracted raised the stalling speed to 159 knots from knots so it was a huge difference without the slats they needed to be flying much faster than normal to avoid stalling one final question remains why couldn't the pilots recover from the stalled wing investigators recreate the takeoff in a flight simulator to find out okay you all set we're ready let's try [Music] one [Music] v1 this crew had almost 5 000 hours in this aircraft you couldn't ask for a more experienced crew in this airplane and if anybody was going to be able to fly that airplane in that condition it would have been this crew [Music] immediately after the slats retract there are dramatic warnings in the cockpit there is a stall warning system that will advise the pilots when the airplane is about to stall it's called a stick shaker and when you're nearing the stall speed your stick will actually start to shake to warn you of this the stick shaker does exactly as the name suggests it vibrates the control column to get the pilot's attention if you get a stall warning you obviously lower the nose and you apply full power and you fly it out of the stall it lowered the nose let the air speed increase they actually would have been fine the plane was recoverable it was landable the simulator tests show that once the pilots are alerted to the problem it is possible to recover why didn't they do that if the pilots on flight 191 had known they were stalling they could have been able to save their plane it seems possible that somehow they didn't know investigators study the cockpit warning system on the dc-10 and make a crucial discovery all the alarms are powered by the left engine when the engine fell off it severed hydraulic systems it severed electrical systems i've lost power to my side looks like we've lost number one it resulted in a loss of instrumentation and of warning uh devices as soon as the left engine came off the warnings that could have saved the plane were disabled they bring in a new test pilot to fly the simulation okay you all set what they don't tell him we're ready let's try one is that all the warnings have been disconnected v1 from that position in the cockpit you can't see that left wing and you they didn't even know the engine was actually gone they thought it had just stopped looks like we've lost number one when pilots they lose an engine when we lose engine power this plane actually lost an engine without warnings the test pilot is in the same plight as the american airlines crew he has no idea his plane has stalled the stick shaker stall warning device had been functioning it's very easy to imagine that the pilot flying the airplane would have put the nose down would have avoided a stall we're banking go right since they don't know about the stall they follow the procedure for an engine failure on takeoff it sealed their fate pilots were taught at that point in time that if you lost an engine the whole idea was to get more altitude faster and get away from the ground so if you lost a second engine you would have that much more altitude to play with and so you were taught to pull back on the wheel and go back to the minimum safe flying speed to get away from the ground reduce speed to 153 knots reducing speed to 153 knots reducing speed by lifting the nose is the exact opposite of what pilots need to do when a plane is about to stall it makes the stall worse and the role more severe following the checklist for a single engine failure made what happened next inevitable and doomed everyone on board if they didn't know they were stalling they didn't stand a chance the pilots flew the plane exactly as they'd been trained to do exactly as procedure demanded that they flight the pilots were doing absolutely the right thing there was absolutely nothing that he could have done he was powerless he was along for the ride the ntsb concludes the pilots were not at fault they do however fault american airlines maintenance practices and the faa for not enforcing proper procedures the faa mandates that stick shakers be installed on both pilots control columns and that the warning system be powered by more than one engine the plane's hydraulics are also redesigned with special plugs to prevent slats and other control surfaces from retracting if the lines are cut when the airplanes were grounded as a result of this accident we found a number of other airplanes with cracks in their fleet inspectors find eight more dc-10s with damaged pylons it was very scary when when the inspections uncovered so many other airplanes were problems that was very very scary because every one of those had the potential of being another accident and had we not done the grounding and we may have had to have yet another accident before we realized the width and breadth of the problem this kind of accident never happened again this engine never fell off this kind of airplane again um in the general sense though it teaches us how to look at safety it teaches us how to look at the culture of training and procedures in the air and procedures on the ground stop stop one final outcome of the flight 191 disaster airlines reconsidered the idea of sending live video to passengers in the cabin the passengers were able to see the airplane going into this dive and we're able to see their own demise in the pack the cockpit camera was abandoned but the shocking photo of flight 191's last moments remains an image that both the airlines and the faa likely wish could be erased [Music] they would much rather have people think of air travel as cramped seats bad food luggage being lost then with dying luggage being lost will make people grumble but people dying will make people not fly you

Channel: On The Move

Views: 1,242,179

Keywords: on the move, cars, planes, trains, documentary, documentaries, full length documentaries, plane documentary, mayday series, mayday, plane disasters, airport, runway, plane pilot, pilot, hd documentary, 2021 documentary, deadliest flight, history, us history

Id: ZDZZnQvM6H8

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021