Plane Crash Diaries

Episode 40 is about maintenance blunders. Aviation is littered with a long list of these, sometimes it the failure of unofficial parts, sometimes its poor management, sometimes engineers who cut corners - and believe it or not, all three.

Because the topic is vast, I’m going to return to this subject in future podcasts.

In this episode we’re going to focus on ground crews replacing important components with non-certified parts and what happens to aeroplanes when you do that.

Our first nomination - the 1949 Strato-Freight Curtiss C-46A crash into the ocean 10 kilometers west of San Juan-Isla Grande airport in Puerto Rico which killed 53 of the 81 people aboard. The plane was en route to Miami and what happened was not just a story of bad maintenance.

Three days prior to the accident, on 4 June 1949 the Strato Freight C-46 arrived in San Juan from Newark, New Jersey for regular maintenance. Mechanics installed a new flap follow cable, then checked both engines and they noted the right engine was misfiring.

Thirteen new spark plugs were installed, the engines cleared and the Curtiss C-46 D registration NC92857 was sent back to its routes. We’ll come back to the problem with the plugs in a moment.

On 7 June the Curtiss was cleared for a flight to Miami, taxying to the runway at 00:10 a midnight flight. Cheaper flight and strike two was the crew overloaded the plane.

There were 75 passengers aboard, including five infants, babes in arms, and 14 other children aged between 2 and 12. Captain Lee Howard Wakefield was in charge, also on board were Captain Alfred Cockrill — the company chief pilot and vice president of Strato-Freight. Copilots were John Connell and George Cary. Stewardess as they called them back in the day, was Judith Hale.Moving along to example two of flouting maintenance rules A Transat Flight 236 from Toronto to Lisbon scheduled August 24th 2001. Everyone survived this accident as you’ll hear.

The Airbus A330 lost all engine power while flying over the Atlantic Ocean- all because of improper maintenance. This incident became known as the Azores Glider - it was the longest passenger aircraft glide without engines at that point, gliding for nearly 75 miles or 121 km

As you’re going to hear, the flight crew made the situation worse although they apparently appeared to get a bad rap.

Experienced pilot 48 year-old Captain Robert Piché was in command, first officer was 28 year-old Dirk DeJager. Piche had 16 800 hours with 796 on an Airbus, while DeJager had logged 4800 hours - 386 on an Airbus. The aircraft was registered as C-GITS configured with 362 seats and placed in service by Air Transat on April 28, 1999. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 772B-60 engines.

Leaving the gate in Toronto, the aircraft had 46.9 tonnes of fuel on board, 4.5 tonnes more than required by regulations. So how did it run out of fuel?The third example of poor maintenance involved the British Airways Flight 5390 1990 event which is very well known, when an improperly installed windscreen blew out, causing the Captain Timothy Lancaster to be sucked partially out of the flight deck.

Again, this was a matter of millimetres. First the events of 10th June 1990.

The County of South Glamorgan was a BAC One-Eleven Series 528FL jet airliner, registered as G-BJRT, captained by 42-year-old Timothy Lancaster. He had 11,050 flight hours, including 1,075 hours on the BAC One-Eleven, while the first officer was 39-year-old Alastair Atchison who had logged 7,500 flight hours — 1,100 of them on the BAC One-Eleven.

The aircraft carried four cabin crew and 81 passengers. Atchison flew what was called a routine take-off at 08:20 local time, then handed control to Lancaster as the BAC One-Eleven Series climbed. As was the habit at the time, both pilots released their shoulder harnesses and Lancaster went further, loosening his lap belt.

This is episode 39 and we’re looking at a horrendous accident, Saudia Airlines Flight 163, a Lockheed TriStar which was gutted in a blaze on the ground on 19th August 1980 - all 301 aboard died.

The plane was registered in Saudi Arabia as HZ-AHK, and made its first first flight on 13 July 1979, and was delivered brand new to Saudia on 21 August 1979.

Some say this is a classic case of cockpit resource management gone haywire, with the combination of an autocratic captain, a young and apparently undercooked first officer, and a flight engineer who had his own list of mysteries as you’re going to hear.Saudia Flight 163 was a scheduled passenger flight departing from Karachi, Pakistan, bound for Kandara Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with a stop planned at Riyadh International Airport. The majority of the passengers were Saudi and Pakistani religious pilgrims on their way to Mecca for a traditional Ramadan holiday, joined by 32 religious pilgrims from Iran. A small number of pax worked in diplomatic missions for various countries.

The question was why the captain had not shut down all engines immediately.He may have prevented the flight attendants from initiating the evacuation by continuing to operate the engines after stopping the aircraft.

This episode we’re going to take a look at commercial airliners that have hit obstacles near runways and how three accidents in the small town of Elizabeth New Jersey in 1951 and 1952 led to rules about clear ways and re-zoning.

It’s important though to stress how the rules have changed improving safety particularly with regard to clear ways.

Take one of the the earliest which was the 1933 Imperial Airways Ruysselede incident on 30 December 1933 when an Avro Ten collided with a radio mast at the town of Ruysselede, West Flanders, Belgium and crashed killing all ten people on board.

The Avro Ten's registration was G-ABLU, nickname Apollo, and had entered service with Imperial Airways in May 1931. Apollo the Avro Ten departed Cologne at 12:20 local time - 20 minutes later than scheduled. A thick fog hampered the flight, and the pilots headed out on a track to the north of the normal route. They appeared to be blissfully unaware of the threat that awaited. Less than an hour later at 13h15 the aircraft was cruising at 250 feet when it hit a guy wire of the 870 foot tall Ruysselede radio mast.

The force of the strike demolished the top section of the mast and the Avro Ten lost a wing and crashed. Four workers at the radio station rushed to help those on board the aircraft, joined by local villagers from Ruysselede.

At least one passenger survived the crash, but in a horrible moment, before they could save him, then there was an explosion and the aircraft burnt up despite valiant attempts by the rescuers to get to those on board all perished.

Thirteen of the rescuers suffered serious burns they were so committed. It’s time now to take a closer look at three accidents in a small town called Elizabeth located close to New Jersey’s Newark International Airport that were going to change aviation regulations regarding zoning and clear ways amongst other rules.

The first crash took place on December 16 1951, when a Miami Airlines flight from Newark to Tampa hit a warehouse in an industrial stretch of the Elizabeth River.

All 56 passengers and crew died. Witnesses described seeing the Curtiss C-46 Commando plane belching smoke after take off. The plane lost altitude, swept low over Elizabeth CBD, stalled, and crashing into the warehouse — parts of the plane skidded through the building into the river Elizabeth. This second crash led Elizabeth Mayor James T. Kirk to demand that Newark Airport be closed, a move opposed by the Port Authority because of those two terminal illnesses called stupid politics and greed. But there was a third crash that was imminent - and strike three would change everyone's minds.

This is episode 37 and we’re dealing with bird strikes. The most famous of these was US Airways flight 1549 from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte.

Pilot Sully Sullenberger and first officer Jeffrey Skiles ditched the Airbus A320 in the Hudson River off Midtown Manhattan after a bird strike led to both engines failing - All 155 on board were rescued.

This was known as the Miracle on the Hudson — but this episode is not going to focus on that miracle. What we’re going to do is cover some of the history of bird strikes and how there’s been a consistent attempt to deal with this challenge.

Bird Strikes on aircraft go back to the earliest recorded heavy than air flights, as noted by Orville Wright in his diary in 1905 after a day on board the Wright Flyer over a cornfield in Ohio —

" flew 4,751 meters in 4 minutes 45 seconds, four complete circles. Twice passed over the fence into Beard's cornfield. Chased flock of birds for two rounds and killed one which fell on top of the upper surface and after a time fell off when swinging a sharp curve.”

Interesting to see that the earliest aviators were chasing birds instead of trying to avoid them, not a bird strike so much as a strike on the bird.

In 1911 French Pilot Eugene Gilbert was flying his open-cockpit Bleriot XI in the Paris to Madrid Air Race over the Pyrenees when he was attacked by an angry mother eagle. I’m not sure about Standard Operating Procedure, but Gilbert was armed and opened fire on the eagle with his trusty pistol, but missed.The greatest loss of life directly linked to a bird strike took place on October 4, 1960, when an Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, Lockheed L-188 Electra, flying from Boston hit a flock of starlings during take-off, damaging all four engines.

The aircraft crashed into Boston harbour killing 62 out of 72 passengers. This focused authorities on the dangers of bird strikes. This crash wasn’t only about avians, but poor maintenance because a pilots seat that slid backwards was cited as part of the litany of events that caused the plane to stall.Another bird-strike incident that was critical in the development of improved standards was the United Air Lines Flight 297 crash.

It was a scheduled flight from Newark International Airport to Atlanta which plunged to the ground 10 miles southwest of Baltimore on November 23, 1962, killing all 17 people on board.

Most accidents occur when a bird collides with the windscreen or is sucked into the engine of jet aircraft, annual damage estimated to be $400 million within the United States alone and up to $1.2 billion to commercial aircraft worldwide.

This is episode 36 and its icy cold out there - it’s time to check out the incidents involving icing - starting with a short list and general description of the causes, then focusing on the two Aeroflot Atonovs accidents in 1971 and a design fault in the ATR-72.

There’s an unfortunately long list of commercial airliners lost due to icing, more than 540 accidents and events caused by aircraft icing by the late 1980s in the United States alone and most of these were fatal.

Anti-icing and de-icing research can be traced back to the early 1930s and in 1948, two scientists, AG Preston and Calvin Blackman conducted the first successful iced flight experiment in which the drag coefficient increased by 81% when the wing was covered and the pilot reported the plane was almost beyond control. I’m not sure of what aircraft they used but the results were extraordinary.

Other research by NASA on the DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft measured various conditions and ice shapes and their effect on aircraft thrust, landing flaps, and angle of attack.

It’s thought that the first recorded case of a commercial airplane accident caused by icing occurred on December 15, 1920 when a de Havilland DH.4 mail plane operated by the United States Post Office Department crashed near Belleville, Pennsylvania, in the USA due to ice accumulation on the wings and control surfaces.There was a happier end to another on 19th December 1946 where a Railway Air Service Douglas Dakota 3 stalled on take-off 1 km north-east of Northolt Airport in London.

This was the case of the scheduled service to Glasgow Airport from London. Four crew and one passenger were on board .. Yes, you heard correctly, one passenger.So to matters more terminal if you excuse the extremely cheesy aviation pun.

That be the highly unusual twin crashes of the Antonovs in 1971 both caused by ice accretion. ot Antonov An-12s crashed on approach to Surgut International Airport, just nine days apart. The crashes occurred under near-identical circumstances due to the aircraft type’s lack of preparedness for flying in severe icing conditions.

It’s the formation of an ice ridge by water droplets beyond the ice protection system and one side anti-icing system that is likely to cause rolling and overturn according to research documents.

A case in point of the ridge cause was an ATR-72 crash in 1994. At that time, the airplane was at a severe level of icing condition, and the co-effect of the electric heating de-icing system at the wing leading edge and the natural conditions formed an ice ridge on the second half of the wing, resulting in a negative pressure zone on the one side's aileron.

Episode 35 - The 1986 Aeromexico collision over L.A. that changed aviation by Desmond Latham

The British government was focused on making dirigibles the transport of choice in the 1930s - competing with the Germans to produce the largest, most luxurious and most convenient way to travel across its empire. In the summer of 1930 two variants were created, one designed by a government team known ironically as "the socialist" airship as it was a labour government, the other "the capitalist" because it was the brainchild of the Vickers company.

But there were issues - It was already known that both the R100 and R101 were lacking in the enough lift originally planned at the outset of the Imperial Airship Scheme in 1925. So the engineers decided to stretch the airship and plonk in another airbag.

This was to lead to a critical failure and the R101 crash in France as you'll hear.

We’re going to look at a few examples of trigger happy pilots and missile operators, starting with the 5th April 1948 Gatow Air Disaster over Berlin as the Cold War ramped up after the Second World War.

 

A British European Airways  Vickers VC.1B Viking airliner crashed near RAF Gatow air base, after a Soviet Air Force Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter aircraft flew into it from below.

 

All ten passengers and four crew on board the Viking were killed, as was the Soviet pilot. This incident is a warning to aviators in the contemporary world, witness the tension between Chinese and Taiwan, North and South Korea, near-misses above the Baltic, and less reported but as dangerous, incidents across the middle East.

 

First, 1948.

 

The Gatow Air Disaster was a mid-air collision that sparked an international incident between the USA, Britain and Russia – leading to heightened tensions and which escalated into what we know as the Berlin Blockade. That was a rather clumsy attempt by Joseph Stalin to force Europe to back down about the Marshall plan.

So let’s take a look at some other examples of the military behaving badly.

 

On July 27, 1955, an El Al flight from Vienna Austria to Tel Aviv Israel blundered into Bulgarian airspace and was shot down by two MiG fighters.

 

All 58 people on board were killed. After initially denying involvement, Bulgaria admitted to having downed the aircraft. Despite occurring during a low point in relations between the Soviet bloc and the US and its allies, international fallout was minimal.

Moving east, on July 23, 1954, mainland China's People's Liberation Army fighters shot down a Cathay Pacific Airways CA 54 Skymaster.

 

The plane was flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong when it was hit - 10 out of the 19 passengers and crew died. In apologizing for the attack to Britain days later, the Chinese government claimed they had thought the plane was a military aircraft from Taiwan which they presumed was on an  attack mission against Hainan Island.

 

Trouble spots include the Qatar and its neighbours, Turkey, North Korea, parts of East Africa, Yemen, China and Taiwan. That's quite a list.

A listener asked me to take a closer look at the crash of a Lear jet in 1999 that was carrying golfer Payne Stewart so here we are.

Of all the crashes we’ve looked at this has to be one of the more frustrating and needs quite a bit of sleuthing. The main reason is the NTSB still has not published a final report and probably never will.

The basic facts are not in dispute – it was a case of a plane decompression at high altitude. But how it happened is another matter.

So let’s try and dig deep and discover what led to the death of one of the best known sportsmen in the United States.

The basic story goes like this.

On October 25, 1999 a Learjet 35 registration N47BA, operated by Sunjet Aviation based in Sanford, Florida departed Orlando, Florida, for Dallas, Texas, at around 0920 eastern daylight time (EDT). Radio contact with the flight was lost north of Gainesville, after air traffic control (ATC) cleared the airplane to flight level (FL) 390.

The learjet was then intercepted by several U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard aircraft as it headed in a north west direction. The military pilots flew close enough to see that the windshields of the Learjet were frosted or covered with condensation.

Later the airplane engines began spooling down, controlled flight was not possible, and the learjet stalled and spiralled to the ground, impacting an open field between the towns of Mila and Aberdeen in South Dakota just before 12h15 central daylight time on October 25th 1999.

The NTSB scrutinised the maintenance logs and found a snag reported in February 1998 that the cabin occasionally would not hold pressure at low altitudes. Maintenance checked this on the ground but could not replicate the problem, so it wasn’t fixed.

IN May 1999 Sunjet maintenance personnel were checked out as part of the Phase A1-6 inspection, which included pressurization system checks. All seemed fine once more.

But it wasn’t.

A Sunjet Aviation pilot reported to Safety Board investigators that a month later, July 22, 1999 during a flight in the very same Learjet, the pressurization system would not maintain a full pressure differential and that later the cabin altitude “started climbing well past 2,000 feet per minute” he said.

When confronted by the NTSB, the Sunjet Aviation Chief pilot denied this, saying that he hadn’t noticed any differential.

However, a July 23, 1999, Work Order discrepancy sheet 5895 noted the following: “Discrepancy: Pressurization check and operation of system.”

We’re focusing on Air Canada Flight 797 that developed and in-flight fire that turned into a conflagration after it landed and the doors were opened.

23 passengers burned to death of were asphyxiated in that terrible incident.

The response to this was crucial to global aviation safety as it led to rules such as airline manufacturers having to ensure that planes could be evacuated inside 90 seconds, visible lights on the floor, smoke detectors on all flights, firefighting training for crew and the briefing passengers sitting in exit rows.

Air Canada Flight 797 was an international passenger flight operating from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Montréal–Dorval International Airport, with one stop at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

It took off from Dallas Forth Worth international Airport at 16h25 local time on 2 June 1983, the plane was a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32, registration C-FTLU.

There was a single scheduled stop at Toronto International Airport, en route to Montreal's Dorval Airport.

51 year-old Donald Cameron was the Captain in charge, and had 13 000 hours flight time, 4 4939 in the DC-9 and had been flying with Air Canada since March 1966.

First Officer Claude Ouimet was 34 and had flown for Air Canada since November 1973. He had 5,650 hours of flight time, including 2,499 hours in the DC-9, and had qualified as a DC-9 first officer in February 1979.