Having just watched the rather horrifying movie Society of the Snow, about the plane crash in 1972 in the Andes mountains that killed many members of a Uruguayan rugby team and some of their families and forced others to struggle for existence for months in bitterly cold desolation before they were rescued, the comments here about the PF-PM relationship seem especially pertinent.
The pilot flying in that situation was relatively inexperienced and was being trained by the captain. The U-shaped flight path was intended to take them to a certain waypoint where they would turn to cross the Andes across a pass of relatively low elevation, then turn again toward their destination. The PF miscalculated and turned much too early, and began descending for the landing while heading directly into very high terrain in poor visibility. Somehow the captain missed all of this.
The additional element here was the Fairchild FH-227, called “the lead sled” by pilots because it was infamously under-powered. It might have been able to clear the mountains but for its passenger load and inadequate thrust. Wikipedia says that 78 of these aircraft were built, and of those 78 paragons of aviation, 23 crashed at one time or another.
Yikes. I fondly remember my father and I taking an Air New England FH-227 from the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia to White River Junction, Vermont, with at least two intermediate stops (Keene and Lebanon, both in New Hampshire, as I recall). I was around nine years old, so 1979-ish. High wing, so nice views down.
According to FlightAware, all flights on the IAH-RSW route are Boeing 737s operated by UAL, and the vast majority are 737-900s, with the occasional MAX-8. So, another black eye for Boeing?
That’s the right flight number but it’s between Newark and Vail. The article says this one was between Houston IAH and Fort Myers. FlightAware shows those all to be 737s. Unless I screwed up.
Online news sites love to just throw in a random stock photos of planes that had nothing to to with the story. The plane involved did happen to be a Boeing, but the photo in that article is just a random 737 in United’s livery, not the actual plane involved in the incident.
I’ll also point out that Boeing doesn’t make engines. A Pratt & Whitney engine attached to a Boeing plane catching fire probably isn’t really Boeing’s fault. But that’s not going to stop people from blaming Boeing.
ETA: Or a CFM engine, since it apparently was a 737 (I trusted @Cervaise’s post saying it was a 757 without reading further).
Airlines sometimes recycle the same flight numbers for multiple flights, so there may well be a United flight from Newark to Vale with that flight number as well. As long as both flights aren’t in the air at the same time it’s perfectly acceptable to do that.
Any article about an airline event includes a file photo of an airplane / some airplanes. Often the same airline, but not always. Rarely do they care enough to get the same airport or aircraft type. So unless it’s a picture of the actual wreckage or damage, don’t assume the pic has anything to do with the situation.
The picture of the United 737 taxiing by a terminal of other United jets in the AOL/USA Today article was taken at Newark. The flight with the engine fire was going from Houston TX to Ft. Myers FL. So was nowhere near Newark NJ.
The same flight number is used multiple times per day by each airline. Flight number 1234 may encompass several segments, several crews, and several different airplanes of different types.
There should be just one flight number 1234 from ABC to DEF, but it’s also common that if that’s a hub & spoke flight, then it’s flight 1234 from the hub to the spoke, then flight 1234 again going back the other way to the hub it left. Which means you need to pay attention because F1234 ABC-DEF is not the same actual flight as F1234 DEF-ABC. Often it’s the same aircraft, but not necessarily. And maybe 60% of the time it’ll be the same crew both ways, and 40% not.
In other aircraft, I’d say it sounded like they forgot to disengage the yaw damper *. But I don’t fly the 737 - it could be automatic, or an entirely different system for all I know.
I guess we could say that the wheels are falling off United Maintenance’s reliability stats this week.
They’re undoubtedly seriously dangerous, but at the same time there’s something maniacally madcap wacky funny about a loose tire doing 180+ mph heading into a city.
Eenie meenie minie moe
Where the hell is it gonna go?
Houston Bush Int’ctl (KIAH) - Southwest Florida Intl (KRSW) - FlightAware
