“The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be:
The flight crewmembers’ misidentification of the damaged engine (after leveling off the
airplane and reducing thrust) and their use of only the damaged engine for thrust during the
remainder of the flight, resulting in an unintentional descent and forced ditching in the Pacific
Ocean. Contributing to the accident were the flight crew’s ineffective crew resource
management, high workload, and stress.”
But it really shows the effect of startle on tunnel vision. Once they were surprised / scared, they both locked into their respective (bad) habits. And once they thought they preliminarily understood their problem, they never questioned that.
One of the side effects of only practicing engine failures occurring at high thrust is that teaches folks that figuring out which engine is acting up is trivial, bordering on instinctive. It’s not. Pretty early on you want to trim out the yaw and after that knowing which engine is acting up is a matter of carefully considering all the gauges; all of them, not most of them or worse yet just one. And performing that consideration in light of where you have the throttles. They were driving around with the power barely above idle and both engines looking similar. At least until that barely-above power left them stupid slow & descending. And they added power to the wrong engine which eventually quit on them. Oops.
Ground worker ingested into an engine (and killed):
“Delta Flight 1111 was taxying to the gate, with one engine on at that time, and a worker was ingested into that engine at 10:25 p.m,” the NTSB said in a statement.
I flew into the Charlotte, N.C. airport yesterday. I noticed, off to the side at the Air National Guard base, an Air Force transport plane in similar livery to the larger, adapted-747 Air Force One. Google revealed that the Vice President was in town for a pro-choice speech, so I knew I’d seen Air Force Two!
I find it real interesting it was promptly ruled a suicide. Guy left a note? Sprinted straight into the engine ending with a running head-first dive as if into a swimming pool? Makes you wonder.
We try to minimize the time spent with engines running while sitting in the parking spot precisely to reduce the duration of risk for anyone waiting impatiently (or inattentively) to begin unloading or servicing. For some airports the distance from clearing the runway to the gate is very short, which leads to a normal speed taxi taking less time than we’re supposed to let the engines cool at idle before shutdown. The common solution is to dawdle the taxi and if necessary dribble slowly up to the stop point so that the cool-down interval is complete as or slightly before you park the brakes. Then shutdown immediately to minimize that tempting risk to jump into unloading before it’s safe to approach.
Shutting down the right engine earlier on taxi-in, or at least once within a couple plane-lengths of parking is another common mitigation, since the normal servicing workers all approach the jet from the right where the cargo doors are.
It appears the Delta crew had shut down the right engine earlier and the guy ended up in the left one.
Most airlines and airports have day/night closed circuit TV cameras trained on every gate. All of which is recorded and retained at least for awhile. There will almost certainly be footage of the whole sequence of events. I rather doubt it’ll get leaked to the public, but you never know. Lotta people take video with their mobiles of course, but often the view of the left side of the airplane is obstructed by the jetbridge.
We have clearly painted lines that everyone and everything needs to stay behind as we approach. Once we get within about a plane length of stopping, our attention gets pretty focused on the guidance dead ahead and somebody could sneak in on left or right unseen. Over the years I have seen some real dangerous nonchalance around where the nose gear should end up. Not so different from a pedestrian who steps off the curb anticipating the car will go past before they get into the lane the car is using. It looks a lot worse from the car driver’s perspective than it does from the ped’s. Not smart, totally verboten procedurally, and I have had a talk with a guy or three, or their supervisor, over the years.
I’ve never noticed anyone darting towards wings or engines at the last 50 feet, but that would also be outside my peripheral vision, so I can’t say it’s never happened to me. Only that I’ve never seen it happen to me.
I feel for the dead guy, but also for his coworkers and the pilots. This is dangerous stuff, but it’s meant to be death-free dangerous stuff. Poor bastard.
Well, the crucial question I had after reading that story was: WTF is a Boeing 717? And when did Boeing start making an airplane that looks exactly like a DC-9 but never told me about it?
Turns out, it IS a DC-9 (well, technically an MD-95). It magically became a 717 when M-D merged with Boeing.
It’s not unlike how the plane formerly known as the Bombardier C-Series became the Airbus A220 when Airbus acquired the design.
ETA: Oh, and Re the Delta no nosegear landing, it’s a neat video and all, but all I could think was “What are you doing filming when you’re supposed to be in the brace position?”
It greatly facilitates taxiing. Other than that, it’s certainly the most optional of the three.
As Mr. Scott almost said to a drunk Klingon, “Let me rephrase that a bit for you …”
Turns out, it IS a DC-9 (well, technically an MD-95). It magically became a 717 when M-D merged with Boeing. Boeing bought McD-D to obtain the “McD” fighter & missile franchise and to shut down their only domestic airliner competitor “-D” in one fell swoop. They rebranded the then prototype MD-95 as the 717, priced it to fail in the marketplace, and immediately withdrew support when it did in fact sell poorly. Stranding the various US and non-US airlines which had bought a bunch of what was actually a darn good aircraft. Dept’s of Justice and Commerce objected to what they (correctly) figured Boeing was up to, but DoD was glad to get Boeing’s financial horsepower behind faltering McD-D’s line-up of military products, and DoD won that bureaucratic tug-of-war.
Here's an interesting thought:
If you’re going to make the kind of emergency landing that will close a runway for a few hours and snarl lots of other flights, it might be smart to land at one of your competitor’s hubs rather than one of your own. Very clever play there Captain Delta. Some folks play tic tac toe. Others checkers. This guy plays chess.
It’s incredible what Boeing has gotten away with. Remember the time that Boeing’s rocket division was caught spying on Lockheed, criminally using said information in DoD bids, and then being “punished” by allowing them to absorb Lockheed (as long as they pretended to spin it off into another company)?
Unless you hit something substantial or a thrust reversor doesn’t deploy correctly it’s basically safety theater. If you want to be safe on a plane then wear your seat belt all the time to avoid unannounced turbulence.
Said another way, it’s safety theater until the emergency landing turns into an emergency crash landing. And then it’s probably too late for scoffers to adopt the elements you dismiss as mere “theater”.
I agree I’d have no expectation of crunching the jet making a main gear-only landing. Even a surprise thrust reverser non-deployment is readily offset by rudder, differential braking, and simply idling both engines. Reversers are only nice to have, not need to have. Braced or no, paying rapt attention or sound asleep, is 99.9% probably going to make zero difference to their personal outcome.
But …
We’ve already rolled snake-eyes once on this flight. Twice is not unprecedented. From my POV I’d rather have the people whose lives are my responsibility maximizing their helpful participation in turning this into a non-event, rather than them trying to stand as close to the edge of the precipice as they can.
Yeah, somebody who pulls out his phone to record the landing is probably the same guy who grabs his carry-on during an evacuation, and then hesitates in the door.
… a flight attendant tells a woman that it’s illegal for the woman to film her without her permission, and cites ‘the FARs’ (which when questioned, the tells the woman’s companion that it means Federal Aviation Administration’.
I am unaware of any FAR (of CFR, if you prefer) that makes it illegal to record a crewmember without the crewmember’s permission, and that such prohibitions are just policies of the individual airlines. (i.e., not illegal, but can still get you kicked off of the aircraft.)
The FA also says that it’s illegal for her to allow a person who appears intoxicated onto the aircraft (14 CFR § 121.575 - Alcoholic beverages), which is correct. So my question is not whether the passenger should have not been allowed on board, because the FA did seem to believe the passenger was intoxicated. Rather, is there an FAA rule that says crew cannot be recorded without permission; or is the FA mistaken, and it’s just a company rule.
My employer’s guidance is that company policy prohibits the use of recording devices in the cabin. It goes on to say that there is no federal law or regulation backing up this specific prohibition.
However, it continues, behavior which represents a safety or security threat is itself prohibited by regulation regardless of the form it takes.
So clear as mud once we get a Karen/Chad interacting with an officious employee.
