I’m asking about commercial airliners, in flight, suffering catastrophic structural failure due to turbulence. I realize that microbursts etc., may have caused crashes, but this isn’t what I’m after. I’m looking for examples of structural failure that resulted in the destruction of the airframe and the loss of the aircraft, caused by turbulence, while in flight. The closest I can find is BOAC Flight 911 in 1966, which crashed after structural failure near Mt Fuji. However, the turbulence wasn’t really documented as the cause of the failure, although it may have been.
I haven’t been able to find any documentation of an airliner failing in this matter. I know mishandling an aircraft can subject it to load factors that exceed its design capabilities, and cause failure, but such a failure would be pilot induced and not caused by turbulence. Anyone have any examples?
My college textbook on Differential Equations had a sidebar on a subject something akin to that.
It seems that a certain model of airplane happened to have wings that flapped at just the “wrong” resonant frequency. So a wee bit of turbulence caused a much magnified bending of the wings, to the point where things broke and the plane crashed.
I might be remembering this a bit wrong. The problem was with a resonant frequency in the place. Maybe it had to do with the pressures on the hull, causing cracks and depressurization. But I think it was the wings that flapped themselves apart.
Okay, I think this is the story I’m thinking of. It wasn’t turbulence in the atmosphere, but vibrations from the engines that set up resonant oscillations in the wings, until the wings tore themselves right off.
Regular airliners follow. C-130s also carry passengers. There are numerous other crashes in the link at the bottom that may have broken up but are only described as crashed after flying into weather. Multiple other disappearances without cause.
C-130 May 23, 1974 : L-100 c/n 4225, delivered September 1967, as Lockheed Aircraft Services, N759AL, modified to L-100-20, August 1969, sold to Saturn Airways, N14ST, named “Bozo”, October 1970. Modified to L-100-30, February 1972. Wing broke in turbulence at Springfield, Illinois.
May 13, 1982 : C-130E 64-0543, c/n 4033, of the 314th Tactical Airlift Wing, crashed when wing broke during formation flight near Judsonia, Arkansas.
April 2, 1986 : HC-130P, 66-0211, c/n 4161, delivered August 1966 as HC-130H, redesignated HC-130P, September 1966, assigned to Air Force Systems Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. To 1551st Flying Training Squadron, October 1977. Marked in Lizard scheme, April 1986. Right wing broke in severe turbulence at low level, 25 kilometers north of Magdalena, New Mexico, New Mexico.
1923[edit]
May 14 – An Air Union Farman F.60 Goliath crashes near Monsures, Somme, France, due to the structural failure of a wing, killing all 6 on board.
1931[edit]
March 21 – Australian National Airways Southern Cloud, an Avro 618 Ten, crashes in the Snowy Mountains while flying from Sydney to Melbourne, killing all eight on board, in Australia’s first significant airline disaster; the crash site remained undiscovered for 27 years; severe weather at the time of the flight is the likely cause of the accident.
1934 July 27 – A Swissair Curtiss T-32 Condor II crashes near Tuttlingen, Germany, after a wing separated in a thunderstorm, killing all 12 passengers and crew on board.
1938[edit]
January 10 – Northwest Airlines Flight 2, a Lockheed L14H Super Electra, crashes near Bozeman, Montana, United States, killing all ten on board; the machine with which the manufacturer measured component vibration is found to be inaccurate, causing the aircraft to be more prone to flutter than thought.
1957 August 11 – Maritime Central Airways Flight 315, a Douglas DC-4, crashes near Issoudun, Quebec after encountering turbulence in a thunderstorm, killing all 79 passengers and crew on board.
1959 May 12 – Capital Airlines Flight 75, a Vickers Viscount 745D flying from New York City to Atlanta, breaks up in flight over Chase, Maryland, due to loss of control in severe turbulence; all 31 on board are killed.
September 29 – Braniff Flight 542, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, breaks up in mid-air and crashes 4 miles (6.4 km) from Buffalo, Texas; all 34 on board perish.
1960 March 17 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710, a Lockheed L-188 Super Electra en route from Chicago to Miami, Florida, breaks apart at 15,000 feet (4,600 m) and crashes near Tell City, Indiana, killing all 63 on board.
1963[edit]
February 12 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705, a Boeing 720, breaks up in turbulence associated with a severe thunderstorm and crashes into the Everglades; all 43 passengers and crew members on board are killed.
1966 August 6 – All 42 on board are killed when Braniff Flight 250, a BAC One-Eleven, flies into an active squall line and breaks apart in mid-air near Falls City, Nebraska.
1968 May 3 – Braniff Flight 352, a Lockheed L-188A Super Electra en route from Houston, Texas to Dallas, breaks up in mid-air in a thunderstorm and crashes near Dawson, Texas; killing its five crew and 80 passengers. Nine years earlier Braniff Flight 542 crashes 49 miles (79 km) away in Buffalo.
1971 December 24 – LANSA Flight 508, a Lockheed L-188 Electra en route from Lima to Pucallpa, Peru, breaks apart in mid-air after being set aflame by lightning; it crashes in the Amazon Rainforest and 91 people die; one German teenage girl, Juliane Koepcke, survives after falling two miles (3 km) down into the rainforest strapped to her seat; she walks through the jungle for 10 days until being rescued by local lumbermen.
1981 October 6 – NLM CityHopper Flight 431, a Fokker F28 Fellowship, is destroyed in flight by a tornado near Rotterdam, killing all 17 people on board.
Anecdotally I can’t think of any such commercial accidents I’ve heard of since the '70s. Earlier events would be historically interesting, but of little utility in predicting the future. Likewise IMO military or fire fighting accidents where the aircraft is flown or maintained utterly unlike modern commercial practice aren’t very relevant.
In the modern era about the only way to directly break an airliner via turbulence is to fly into a full bore tornadic thunderstorm or volcanic eruption column. And the industry has pretty good procedures and systems in place to avoid that little faux pax.
Lesser turbulence could lead to loss of control and / or overcontrol and overstressing the airframe to the point of structural failure. In many cases it’d be pretty hard for the accident investigation to tell the difference between these cases; in others it’d be obvious.
Thanks guys. This followed a discussion of just how dangerous turbulence is to a modern airliner, given the structural integrity and technological tools available to avoid the known danger areas. It seems that the last 50 years has seen some great advances in materials and construction practices.
Hopefully, for all of us, the next time your flying (commercial) and it gets a little bumpy, you’ll just sit back and relax.
I once explained to an old lady that big airliners (like the Boeing 777) are much less prone to being flung about by turbulence because of their heavy weight, while small jets like Embraers are much more vulnerable and “toss-able” due to being dainty and light…was that explanation correct?
Not really. Filling in on what **usedtobe **said pretty tersely …
For inflight turbulence, what matters is how big the wing is versus how heavy the airplane is. A 777 has a relatively bigger wing than an Embraer, so bounces around more. At the limits, a fighter has a relatively tiny wing & punches through turbulence mostly undisturbed, whereas a sailplane has a ginourmous wing and breaks easily in turbulence.
There’s also the issue that for really big structures turbulence can hit different parts differently. This was the undoing of the large dirigibles; in rough conditions the front would be pulled one way and the back another, giving 2x the strain versus the whole thing being buffeted up / down as a unit. Big jets arent’ that big (yet), but we’re getting there.
Your punchline is correct. We *can *break the jet if we try or are willfully blind to hazards; it just takes far more impetus than you’re likely ever come close to experiencing.
I recall reading there was some incident (involving a 737) that I read about was the reason why much bigger separation between aircraft was necessary. Not long after much bigger (747?) planes began flying, a medium-sized passenger jet was tossed by the wake turbulence of a big jet that it flew through. Not sure if it crashed, but whatever it di, it made an impression on the FAA. They increased the separation distance required.
Note that the crashes due to “bad weather” could as easily been icing as break-up turbulence. A recent trans-Pacific flight a passenger was killed(?) when thrown against the ceiling, a drink cart also apparently hit the ceiling, yet no structural damage to the plane.
Wake turbulence is a complex issue. But in general the bigger the aircraft, the bigger the wake. And the smaller the aircraft, the more it’s affected by any given wake. So really small following really big is really bad.
This article Wake turbulence - Wikipedia is a pretty good summary as of a couple years ago.
Interestingly the gov’t and industry are just now learning that the current rigid standards are far too conservative most of the time but occasionally a bit too lax when everything stacks up just wrong. They’re working on being able to track wake in real time and apply dynamic spacing to squeeze more jets into the existing airports with the same or improved safety. The wiki article doesn’t include anything about this effort.
Any ideas on what “G” load would equal that 154% of the worst thing the plane would EVER encounter? ( How is that determined anyway? )
At Gross weight?
Nearly empty?
Is weight even that much of a consideration when asking this particular question?
Can this aircraft be recovered from a vertical position at 80% gross weight starting at 150 KTS when magically placed vertical before speed build up breaks the airplane or there is not room to accomplish the recovery in 40,000 feet regardless of the speed? ( all about when is the speed breaks the airplane before the max “G” load is too small such that recovery will always be too slow = not enough room? )
I know from experience that a clean, cruise condition, going vertical in a C-310Q at 140KTS can be recovered with proper sequence & speed of application of recovery actions in less than 5000 feet. ( yeah, I guessed lucky and was very quick but where is the point on size or style of airliner that it can not be done no way, no how? )
DC-3 vs/up to B-747-8
Old Lear 24?
Saberliner with Hover as pilot?
Falcon 10?
Piston Learstar-500?
A-26?
My dad was on board when a B-17 was recovered from vertical. The aircraft was forever unfit to fly but it got them on the ground.
Informed as much as possible, information & opinions???
Transport category aircraft are certificated to survive +2.5G at max gross weight. Ultimate load (i.e. point of failure) is required to be 150% of that, or 3.75G. Hail Ant’s video shows the aircraft breaking just above that requirement. Which is what the engineers want: exactly as strong as required, and no stronger = no heavier.
So no, it’s not 154% of “the worst thing the aircraft would ever encounter.” It’s 3.75Gs at max gross weight, and the it’s the crews’ job to ensure loads that big are never actually applied. Because if they are, the aircraft will (not may) catastrophically disassemble.
The vid isn’t specific about which model 777 was being tested, but I’m gonna bet it was the first -200 model. Max gross weight for that model is 545,000 lbs., so that test wing broke while supporting the equivalent of about 2,050,000 lbs. Or roughly 1000 tons. At lighter weights one could in theory pull more Gs before something broke. But absent a G-meter that’d be hard to do accurately.
To be sure, the FAA chose the +2.5G standard with some eye to what are statistically realistic risks, so it’s not like the number is just anally extracted. Since aircraft are not routinely falling out of the sky in pieces we can say we have experimental proof the standard is conservative enough versus real world risks in the current Earth atmosphere. In fact it might be too conservative.
The recovery from low-speed nose-down vertical is an interesting discussion. Armed with a V-G envelope diagram the answer can be laboriously guesstimated. My WAG is almost any subsonic non-military/aerobatic jet will have the same answer: it can be done in about 12,000 feet if everything keeps working correctly throughout the maneuver.
This distance doesn’t have much real-world applicability because it’s pretty hard to imagine being both 90 degrees nose low and very, very slow; there’s almost no way to get from normal flight into that situation.
Any piston aircraft will have more drag and at least as good a G-limit and at least as good a G-available for any given speed in the recovery. So most will be able to be recovered in less altitude.
Where it gets tricky is in aircraft with both low G-limits and low V[sub]NE[/sub]. A flimsy ultralight might be an example, or a WWI bomber / transport biplane. I’d expect those to fall apart before you could get them close enough to level to stop accelerating.
The instructor in N7711G was an instructor I’d flown with. That crash is personal to those of us who knew a victim of that tragedy, or witnessed the fire following the crash on that very hot Monday morning in San Diego. Air disasters are not, in any way, amusing.
In 2011 a tornado hitLambert Airport in St. Louis. It damaged three aircraft at their gates, and one which was taxiing. Most of the damage to the planes was from debris hitting them, although one plane was rocked so hard it actually was moved away from the jetway.