- Storico - UA232 Sioux City, 1989

[East End Ave]

Celebrando i 30 anni di uno dei peggiori incidenti nella storia dell’aviazione, UA ricorda quell’evento con un’intervista al CPT (più tardi vedo di postarla per intero); 112 vittime, ma anche, e soprattutto, grazie alla straordinaria gestione da parte del crew, 184 sopravvissuti all’inferno di quello schianto, le cui immagini e il CVR sono davvero qualcosa di drammatico.


Captain Al Haynes on United Flight 232

Today we honor the loved ones of the passengers and crew who died -- and those who survived -- in the Sioux City, Iowa, crash of Flight 232 in 1989.

To mark the 30th anniversary, we are re-publishing a Q&A we first ran in 2014 with retired United Captain Al Haynes about his experiences in the cockpit of that flight and the teamwork, training and preparation that contributed to minimizing the loss of life.

When the pilots aboard United Flight 232 on July 19, 1989, recognized the heart-stopping fact that the DC-10 they were flying had experienced the complete loss of all its hydraulic controls, it seemed that everyone on board that day was facing almost certain death. One hundred twelve of the 296 people on board the flight died as a result of the crash, including Flight Attendant Rene Le Beau, who was working the flight. But the actions that the flight and inflight crews, air traffic control representatives, local officials and first responders took that day saved 184 lives.

About an hour into the flight, when the engine in the tail of the DC-10 failed, 70 pieces of shrapnel penetrated the horizontal stabilizer and severed the No. 1 and No. 3 hydraulic lines. According to Captain Haynes, the odds of that happening were literally a billion to one. No one had trained for it.

CVR ATC - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3YkiMDS5y8

Ricostruzione estesa - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1BOOxJ5gsrU

 

[belumosi]

Ricordo di avere visto il film che ricostruiva l'incidente. Oltre che a bordo, ci fu una gestione esemplare anche dei soccorsi a terra.

 

[13900]

Mi ricordo di quel film, spero di poter vedere l'intervista per intero quando sara' disponibile.

 

[East End Ave]

L'intervista, breve ma efficace:

Had you had previous emergencies in flight?

Not emergencies. Situations. Something would go wrong. You had book of procedures that you would follow.

After you lost the No. 2 engine, you still had about three-quarters of an hour in the air before the crash. How did cockpit resource management and crew communication take over?

It was absolutely vital. None of us had any idea what to do. It was a matter of the whole crew offering suggestions. “Should we try this, should we do that?” CLR, as United called it, Command Leadership Resource training, told me that if you don’t know what to do, you'd better listen to what [the crew] had to say. I didn't know what to do, and they all knew it. Neither did they. It was a matter of everybody kicking in and let’s use that to work together to find a way to get this thing on the ground.

What do you think caused you to adjust the throttles on the No. 1 and No. 3 engines to retain some ability to keep 232 in flight?

The airplane was starting to roll over. After the damage to the tail, when the airplane turned, the right wing went down. It started to roll. I don’t know what made me close the No. 1 throttle and push No. 3, [other than] the hopes that the increase in thrust would lift that wing. And it did.

What was the communication among the crew members like?

We had a hard time convincing people on the ground that we had no flight controls. The first officer [Bill Records] was doing everything he could to fly that airplane. When the No. 2 engine quit, we immediately thought: ‘What’s the problem? What happened?’ When Dudley [Flight Engineer Dudley Dvorak] told us we'd lost all hydraulics, I didn’t believe that. I went back to look at the panel. Then it was all about, 'What will keep this thing in the air?' You try this and you try that. Bill and I still worked the controls. We couldn’t take the chance that there wasn’t something out there that would work. Denny [DC-10 instructor Capt. Denny Fitch, who had been seated in first class on Flight 232 and offered his services to the crew] went back and saw the controls were not moving at all. By experiment, we found out that by using separated thrust to keep the wing from turning, we could keep reasonably level flight.

What was the mood like?

Not panicky. It was hard to believe that everybody stayed so calm. It was basic training. Any aviator knows, if you panic, you die. That's especially true in aviation. So you don’t panic. We all had military training, except Denny. Among the four of us, we had 103 years of aviation experience in that cockpit.

The flight attendants did a fantastic job of keeping people calm. They formed their own plan for triage with the passengers. They decided, OK, when help comes, who [among the passengers] has to go first? They did a lot that wasn’t ever mentioned anywhere. They had 290 people back there they had to keep under control and calm, while they had to get prepared for something they'd never done. None of us had had an emergency landing or an evacuation. They were just as new at it as we were. Their own “checklist” helped them do what they could do to help get people prepared [for the crash].

How did the crash change the way pilots train and communicate?

All the airlines have developed Cockpit Resource Management. In the military, in private aviation, it has become a very big part of training. If we hadn’t had CRM, I’m not sure we would have reacted in the same way. "The main thing it taught me as a captain was get the other crew members involved. Everyone there had the right to speak up, a right to be heard. If you’re the so-called leader, then you’d better listen."



Those principles apply everywhere. In every business office. Everything changes so fast -- by the time you get your computer programmed the way you want it, it’s time for an upgrade. Everybody has to stay together to keep up with progress. That’s true in aviation, in banking and in running an airline. You’ve got to have a group of people, a team working together to keep up with progress.

What do you think about the fact that when the Flight 232 parameters were entered into the simulators, no one was able to reproduce your landing?

I'd heard that they had 12 pilots put in simulators, and no one got close to the airport, none successfully landed the plane. We didn't, either. But we came closer. I've been giving talks for over 20 years on Flight 232, and I credit five reasons why so many people survived. Luck, communications, preparation, execution and cooperation. I credit luck with the fact that we could get the airplane on the ground, because nobody else could do it. How come we did it and they didn’t? I don’t think that who the pilot is influences it at all.

"Having a drill, having a plan, and taking it seriously, and working on it, is very, very important," Captain Haynes said, in a presentation he made to the NASA Ames Research Center in Edwards, California, in 1991.