Charlie Victor Romeo - Accidents and Incidents

Accidents and Incidents

The FAA distinguishes between aviation accidents and incidents: an accident is an occurrence aboard an aircraft that injures or kills one or more passengers or crew members, while an incident is “an occurrence involving one or more aircraft in which a hazard or a potential hazard to safety is involved but not classified as an accident due to the degree of injury and/or extent of damage."" The accidents and incidents depicted are:

• American Airlines Flight 1572 (12 November 1995) – The crew incorrectly set the altimeter on approach to Bradley International Airport in Hartford, CT, so they were flying 70 feet lower than they thought they were. This led to them crashing into the treetops as they tried to perform a night landing. The engines ingested the trees and failed, so the pilots lowered the flaps 40 degrees to create a "wing in ground" effect, which enabled them to make it to the runway and land with no casualties.
• American Eagle Flight 4184 (31 October 1994) – A design flaw in the plane's de-icing systems forced the plane into a sudden roll from which the crew was unable to recover. The plane then crashed into a field, killing all passengers and crew.
• Aeroperú Airlines Flight 603 (2 October 1996) – The maintenance crew had taped over the static ports before washing the plane, and then forgot to remove the tape. This resulted in the flight instruments, such as the altimeter and airspeed indicator, failing while the plane was flying through dense fog at 1 AM over the ocean. They had no sense of where they were going or how high they were. The co-pilot began reading through the manual, trying to figure out how to solve the problem. Meanwhile, all sorts of warnings were going off, both because the plane thought that the instrument readings were consistent with various emergencies and because the crew's actions, based on false data, were creating problems. The pilot communicated with the air traffic controller, who kept telling them that they were at 9,700 feet. Actually, they were flying dangerously low, as indicated by the repeated "Too low. Terrain!" warning. The pilot decided to descend and ended up crashing into the ocean, killing all passengers and crew. Air traffic control had been relaying the faulty altitude information transmitted by the plane's transponder.
• United States Air Force Yukla 27 (22 September 1995) – Another plane disturbed a flock of several hundred Canada geese on the runway, which then took off in unison. However, the tower failed to inform the crew before they took off and flew into the flock. Both engines on the left wing ingested birds and failed catastrophically. In accordance with their training, the crew started dumping fuel in order to lighten the craft. They began a left-hand turn and attempted to return to the airport. The aircraft struck a low-hill on the north side of the airfield and exploded, killing all passengers and crew.
• Japan Air Lines Flight 123 (12 August 1985) – A bulkhead ruptured, causing the loss of the vertical fin and all hydraulics. The crew had no way to control the plane except by adjusting engine throttles. They flew the plane expertly with what controls they had and kept it aloft for about a half hour, but the plane finally crashed into a mountain, killing 520 of the 524 on board (the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in history). Investigators later attributed the bulkhead rupture to damage from a tail strike six years earlier.
• United Airlines Flight 232 (19 July 1989) – An engine fan disc shattered, severing hydraulic lines and forcing the shutdown of the engine, in effect taking out all three of the triply redundant hydraulic systems. As with Japan Air Lines Flight 123, they had no control of the flight control surfaces, and used left and right engine throttles to control the aircraft. The misconception with this incident is that the crew handed over the controls to a DC-10 flight instructor who was on board the flight, this is in fact incorrect. The original crew remained in control of the aircraft and the DC-10 flight instructor was actually a non-revenue passenger aboard the aircraft, who offered his assistance to the Captain. Together they managed to land at Sioux Gateway Airport. The wings dipped at the last moment leading to a crash killing 110 of its 285 passengers and one of the 11 crew members. The (then somewhat new) concept of current Crew Resource Management (CRM) was credited extensively by the crew and the NTSB as a leading factor in keeping a truly horrific accident from being much worse, and saving over 180 lives that would have almost surely been lost had the concept of the "Infallible Captain" still been in use.