United Airline Flight 232

On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 suffered a catastrophic engine failure resulting in the loss of hydraulic controls, leading to a dramatic emergency landing. Despite the crisis, the quick thinking and skillful actions of Captain Al Haynes, First Officer Bill Records, and DC-10 instructor Denny Fitch saved 185 lives from what could have been a total disaster. The subsequent investigation unveiled a rare metallurgical flaw that caused the engine failure, leading to important changes in aircraft safety and design.

00:00 Introduction to the United Airlines Flight 232 Disaster
01:20 The Catastrophic Engine Failure
02:41 Desperate Measures in the Cockpit
04:05 Struggling to Control the Aircraft
07:03 Preparing for an Emergency Landing
12:10 The Crash Landing
15:50 Aftermath and Investigation
19:00 Conclusion and Reflections

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Transcript

 On July 19th, 1989, United Airlines Flight 2 32 would suffer a catastrophic engine failure, which led to the loss of control of the aircraft. The pilots fought the aircraft the entire way down and crashed on landing 111. People would lose their lives in the crash, however. Due to the pilot's actions in the cockpit, 185 people managed to walk away.

So what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's a disaster.

Tonight we are diving into the United Airlines Flight 2 32 crash. The crash was caused ultimately by the complete loss of hydraulic controls, something no one at the time thought was possible. While no one thought this was possible, no one also thought. The landing the pilots managed was possible. Either they managed to bring the plane down while barely being able to control the plane and saved more than half the lives of the people on the plane.

While any loss of life is regrettable. Their actions minimized what should have been a total loss On July 19th, flight 2 32, a McDonald Douglas, DC 10 was an hour outside of Denver making its way to Chicago. Traveling at 37,000 feet in clear skies, a relatively easy and relaxed flight for the veteran pilot Captain Al Haynes and First Officer Bill records in the cockpit.

They were relaxed drinking coffee and just enjoying the flight. United Airlines was running a special children's day where kids got to fly for a penny, so there was a lot of kids on board. Of the 285 passengers, 52 were kids. Lunch had just been served and the flight attendants were clearing away the trays and serving coffee.

The passengers had all been told to expect a smooth flight with no turbulence. That went to shit when a loud bang rang out from the rear of the plane. The plane went into a violent shake. The smooth ride was over. There had been no warning, no alarms in the cockpit, nothing. First Officer Bill records quickly turned off the autopilot to take manual control of the aircraft.

The shakes had gotten so bad they could barely read the gauges as they struggled to control the plane. Captain Haynes had to lean in real close to see they lost the number two engine. On the DC 10, the number two engine is mounted in the rear of the plane above the tail, and it had suffered a catastrophic failure.

They fought to level the plane but were unsuccessful. Captain Haynes quickly shut down the damage to engine in hopes of preventing further damage to the plane. With the engine shut down, the shaking quit. However, the right wing kept dipping down. First officer records told Captain Haynes that he was unable to control the plane.

It was not responding at all to his controls, and continued to bank further and further to the right. I. Captain Haynes tried to help. They were desperately pulling the control yolk to the left. If they can't get the plane to level out, they would be quickly flying upside down. They knew they were in trouble.

I. The plane had become impossible to steer. They could not understand how the loss of a single engine could do. This flight engineer Dudley Doak told Captain Haynes, they had no hydraulic fluid left. Every hydraulic gauge was at zero. Again, something no one thought was possible. The hydraulic systems in planes of this size transmits the controls from the pilot's yolk to the control surfaces.

Things like the rudder, the elevators, and the arons. Without hydraulic fluid, it would be impossible for the system to work and when most of the systems in the aircraft depend on hydraulics to work, not having it. Means you're fucked. No steering, no altitude controls, no landing gear, nothing works. They clung to the control yolks in desperation, hoping for some kind of miracle for the plane to move if.

Only a little bit. They checked manuals and looked for solutions, but there was none, nothing in a manual and nothing in their training to deal with the loss of three separate hydraulic systems. They could deal with the loss of one, maybe two, since the other systems would act as backup, but nothing could be done about the loss of three.

Without any kind of training or anything to tell them what to do in this kind of situation. Captain Haynes came up with a plan on the spot. They'd use the remaining two wing mounted engines. They hoped by adjusting the thrust to the two engines, they could get the point to level out and fly straight.

They had to go slow during these adjustments. A single error could be catastrophic. Working with tiny adjustments, they got the aircraft to level off.

It worked, but they were still in serious danger. They had 400 miles to go until they hit Chicago, but they had no idea how they were going to land the plane without having any control of the movement. A DC 10 has never been landed safely without hydraulics. They had the lives of 296 people in their hands.

And they needed to figure it out quickly. Then the next problem hit the nose of the plane pitched downwards without the elevators. They had no control on pulling out of the dive, so they tried the engines again. They steadily increased power to the engines

by increasing power. They hope to generate more lift under the wings to pull them out of the dive. Again, it worked, but they had lost a thousand feet of altitude. They needed to find a place to land. They were never going to make it to Chicago. I. With the right wing dipping, the plane had been steadily drifting to the right.

They called out over the radio and found Sioux City to be the closest airport to them. They told flight attendant Jan Brown to get the cabin prepared. Then the next problem hit the nose of the plane pitched up. The plane started to climb. As it went into the climb, their speed started to drop. With the reduction in speed, the wings would lose lift.

If they can't break the climb, there's a very real possibility. The plane will stall, and if the plane stalls, they'll drop out of the sky. To lower the nose, they had to go back to the engines and carefully reduce power to both engines without losing level flight. Again, their plan worked. They came out of the climb, but only for the nose to dip down again, so they had to slowly put power back to the engines.

They lost another 1500 feet of altitude during this. At the current rate, they were dropping. The plane would crash in 30 minutes, and they were still 55 miles from Sioux City back in the cabin. Denny Fitch saw Jan looking distressed as she left the cockpit. He tried to reassure her that the DC 10 could fly on two engines with no problem, and normally Denny knew what he was talking about.

He was a DC 10 flight instructor and a training check pilot. He was probably the most experienced person in the world that knew the DC 10 and absolutely the one guy you'd want with you if something went wrong. His assurances went unheated. As Jan told him the plane had lost all hydraulics. He sent Jan back out to the pilots to offer his assistance.

Back in the cockpit, the pilots were on the radio with Sioux City Air traffic control and got the heading they needed to be on, which brings another problem. The approach to the airport requires a left-handed turn, and the plane is still pulling to the right. They were afraid to attempt the left turn. So they attempted to do the only thing they could, the plane wanted to go, right?

So they'd let it go. Hoping to turn the plane 360 degrees and bring it to the right heading. They alternated the thrust to the remaining engines to get it to turn right in the process. The nose drops again, accelerating downwards. They completed the turn but lost another thousand feet. They were now 40 miles from Sioux City.

They did not expect to make it until Jan walks back in with the news of a DC 10 instructor on board offering help. I. They were greatly relieved hearing this, hoping he would know things they did not. They were more than happy to have his help and said to have him come to the cockpit. Denny walked into a scene he was not expecting.

Both pilots were white knuckling the control yolks, arms and necks tensed as they strained at the controls. Normal flying can be done by fingertips, so he was just a bit surprised after taking in the entirety of the situation in his head. His immediate conclusion was that he was not going to survive the day.

At Captain Haynes instruction, he took over control of the alternating thrust to the engines. He soon got a feel for the aircraft and the controls. Sioux City quickly came into view. They were still going way too fast to land normally, and they had no way to reduce speed. Even if they managed to get lined up perfectly with the runway, they had no idea what would happen if they tried landing at that speed.

They also could not raise the nose like normal. Denny continued to alternate power to the engines keeping the plane level.

They were now 10 minutes from a landing. No one thought was possible. They did not expect anyone to walk away from the plane. Emergency crews at the airport were assembling, preparing for the worst and ready to be on hand. When the plane came down, eight minutes out, captain Haynes informs the passengers what's about to happen and to be prepared for the worst thing they've ever gone through.

The plane was going to crash. They were now 9,000 feet in the air. Minutes away from the airport and traveling at a speed nearly double that abnormal landing speeds. They hoped that dropping the landing gear would create enough drag to slow the plane down more and without hydraulics. They had to release the landing gear manually.

And hope that gravity locks them in place. If they don't lock into place. They are definitely fucked. The gears lock into place and the drag reduces the plane speed, but not enough. They're still flying at over 70 knots faster than they should be 16 miles from the airport. The crew struts in for the landing ahead.

They had to make another right turn to attempt to line up with a runway. Without the flats to control altitude, they had to keep the engines revved up to generate lift to stop from dropping out of the sky. They're descending at nearly 1600 feet per minute, which is really damn fast, and they can't slow down the engines or reduce speed.

They had to actually increase power to keep the nose up.

They were coming down to the runway. They would only have very little braking power and reverse thrust to control and stop when the plane hit the ground. No one had ever successfully made a landing like this 100 feet off the ground. The nose pitches down again, airspeed increases, and the right wing drops.

They had to get level. They desperately fought to control the plane. It did not work. They hit hard.

The right wing struck the ground. Jet fuel from the wing spilled out going up in flames immediately. The force of the landing caused a section of the tail to be ripped off as the rest of the plane bounced down the runway. The landing gear and engines were ripped off as the fuselage broke up into several pieces on its final impact.

The right wing was completely torn off, throwing the main part of the plane into a sideways skid, down the runway, causing it to flip on its back. The plane came to a stop upside down in the cornfield. The cabin was filling up quickly with smoke.

The smoke pushed the survivors to the rear of the plane where they were able to get out of a hole in the tail section. A few survivors would reenter the plane to help those who had gotten trapped inside, and they were the lucky ones. The plane was in pieces spread out over the runway in cornfield. It would take several minutes to locate the cockpit, which had gotten separated over 600 feet from the rest of the wreckage.

All four crew members in the cockpit survived. Rescue workers moved quickly to get them out. 111 passengers, including 11 children, would not make it. No one had any doubts. There would not be any survivors of the crash, but 185 people would make it out of the fire. The National Transport Safety Board quickly got an investigation underway and began examining the wreckage.

They knew what caused the crash, but they needed to know the why. They quickly discovered the fan disc was missing from the damaged engine and they needed to find it. They knew it held the key to what caused the failure. Metallurgists were sent into help. It was almost unheard of that a fan disc would fail.

They began a massive search for the engine in the field. While the search was underway, investigators began looking into the hydraulic failure. Each of the three systems were controlled by an engine with only one engine failing. They should still have two working hydraulic systems. As they examined the wreckage, they found that all three hydraulic systems met up at the rear of the plane, right under the number two engine.

When the engine failed, it shot shrapnel through the rear of the plane. The shrapnel managed to sever the hydraulic lines in several places, leaving the plane to bleed out. So now they know what happened to the hydraulics. But they still needed to know what caused the damage in the first place. They became so desperate to find this fan desk.

They offered a $50,000 reward to the person who found it. It would be three months after the crash, before the missing piece was found. A farmer found it in her farm. Field 60 miles away from the airport and the piece was sent out to be examined. This piece of the fan is made from a titanium alloy that is really fucking strong and should not be easily broken.

During the exam, they found a fatigue crack in the metal. Under further examination, they found chemicals in the alloy that should not have been there. A microscopic imperfection in the alloy led to a crack that continued to build up over 17 years of use. Every time the engine started and stopped, the crack would've gotten bigger.

It was a time bomb that had waited 17 years to go off. The engine had gone through regular inspections, but the location of the crack was difficult to see. The NTSB put out a recommendation for more thorough inspections, and the way the alloy was made was further refined to make sure any imperfections were removed.

Removed. The DC 10 also underwent Avery design. They added valves to the hydraulic systems. In the event of a line being severed, these valves would shut off that section of the plane to prevent the loss of hydraulic pressure,

and that was the United Airlines flight 2 32 disaster. A horrific situation that through the quick actions of the crew minimized the loss of life. Thanks for listening. And if you like the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your Apple choice, and you can reach the show at Histories a disaster@gmail.com with comments or suggestions, and follow the show on social media.

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