United 232

"I didn't save him... God saved the child... I just carried him, sir." -Col. Dennis Nielsen

As you may or may not know by now, I like to investigate airplane crashes.  One that struck a chord with me was the crash of United Airlines flight 232.  I've actually been to the site of the crash, and stood in the spot where the landing gear punctured the runway, because the runway that it landed on is no longer part of the airport and now belongs to the Mid-America Air Museum.

In my free time, I wrote the following "analysis," if you will, of the crash of flight 232.  At the end are my own personal pictures from my visit to the crash site in July 2012.

(My information was from wikipedia and Air Crash Investigation and my own knowledge.)

United 232

United Airlines flight 232 was a regularly scheduled flight from Denver, CO to Chicago, IL.  On July 19, 1989, 285 passengers and 11 crew members boarded the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 (tail number N1819U).  Only 185 of them would de-plane alive. 

The DC-10 was developed by McDonnell Douglas in the late 1960s and early 1970s to rival the Boeing-747.  The DC-10 is a wide-body jet with three engines (one on each wing and a tail mounted engine) and is meant for medium to long flights.  Basically it’s big, meant to carry lots of people and has the ability to go a long distance.  Originally there were three variations of the DC-10, the DC-10-10, DC-10-10CF and the DC-10-15.  Over the years, however, MD added longer range variations such as the -20, -30, -30CF, -30ER, -30AF, -40 and -50 (insert a DC-10 before all those numbers.)  Although still in service today, the production of the DC-10 ended in 1988.

The DC-10 was a well-liked plane, but it had a history riddled with problems.  I personally do not like the DC-10, and I’m glad it’s not often used for passenger travel anymore.  Every so often I will see a FedEx DC-10 flying into PDX and I always shudder.  Apparently it was proved to be a safe and reliable aircraft, but it didn’t start out well.  I know it’s true that with every aviation disaster air travel becomes safer, but I guess I hold a grudge on the DC-10.

The DC-10 was involved in 9 hijackings, 56 “aviation occurrences” (according to Wikipedia, whatever that means) and had 1,262 occupant deaths.  As if the DC-10 with its multitude of problems didn’t do enough on its own, it dropped a piece of metal on the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport in the Paris area and snatched Air France 4590 (Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde) out of the air on takeoff, killing 113 people and ending supersonic passenger travel forever.

But on this day, the day in question, the DC-10 N1819U did something much worse than just drop a piece of metal.

Well, sort of.

N1819U did drop a piece of metal… from the number 2 engine in the tail!  A fandisk (that thing that looks like a fan with 50 blades inside the jet engines) had a crack.  A crack that could have, and should have, been detected when N1819U was in for maintenance, not long before the accident.  The centrifugal force placed on the fandisk by it spinning so incredibly fast put stress on this crack and it grew to several millimeters in size.  Not giant compared to most things we see on a daily basis, but big enough to bring down a 168 ton airliner!  Think of it… 168 tons of metal and equipment, 285 passengers, 8 crew and 3 pilots, dragged screaming out of the sky by a 10 millimeter crack (or whatever it was.)  Insane.  Talk about Achilles heels! 

Anyway.  The fandisk eventually couldn’t take the stress any longer and BANG!  It split in half, exploding out of the number 2 engine at a tremendous speed.  This caused shrapnel to be flung in all directions with disastrous consequences.  A piece of metal from the explosion basically severed all three of the hydraulic system lines, which (stupidly) come together in the tail section.  All the hydraulic fluid leaked out, leaving the airplane with no flight controls whatsoever.

Essentially, N1819U bled to death at 35,000 feet.

The hydraulic system is, in a word, crucial.  Without the hydraulic system, everything that lets a pilot fly an airplane no longer works.  Things like the flaps, slats, ailerons, rudder, elevator etc.  Imagine you’re driving a car and suddenly you have no steering wheel, gear shift, wipers or emergency brake.  All you have are pedals.  And you’re zooming down a highway at 70mph.  That’s essentially the horror that Captain Al Haynes, First Officer William Records and Flight Engineer Dudley Dvorak all faced on that hot July afternoon.

Fortunately for everybody on board United 232, one of the passengers was a DC-10 Instructor Pilot named Dennis (Denny) Fitch.  In all probability there was nobody on Earth who knew more about the DC-10 than he did.  When the number 2 engine blew up, Captain Haynes shut it down.  Denny Fitch heard the sounds of the explosion, felt the airplane shaking violently, then heard the engine shut down, and realized immediately what had happened.  Looking out the window, Fitch noticed the right wing dipping low.  Knowing that the engine that had failed was in the tail, right in the middle, he knew something was wrong.  A central engine failure should not cause an airplane to bank one way or the other.  It should be flying straight.  He offered his assistance to the pilots, which they immediately accepted. 

Fitch raced to the cockpit and the sight that met his eyes startled him greatly.  He found two pilots, both desperately clutching their control columns, their tendons standing out and their knuckles white with effort.  The really shocking part was that both pilots had their control columns all the way to the left but the airplane was still banking so sharply to the right that it was nearly upside down.  This should not be possible.  During flight, the pilots should never have the control column all the way over to one side, to say nothing of having it all the way over to one side and having the plane rolling the other way.

Captain Haynes told Flight Engineer Dvorak to “look in the QRH” (the quick resource handbook, I believe) for how to correct this problem.  Dvorak responded that there were no instructions for a complete loss of hydraulics because, technically, it shouldn’t be possible!

So they had to wing it.  No pun intended.

Captain Haynes and First Officer Records discovered that they could pull the airplane out of the severe right bank it was in by using the two remaining engines.  Records increased power to the right engine and Haynes reduced power to the left engine.  In response, the right wing came up and the plane leveled.  This meant, however, that N1819U could only make right turns.  Captain Haynes asked Fitch to take over the throttles and steer the plane while he, Records and Dvorak tried to do several things at once.  Dvorak monitored gauges, Records talked to Chicago Air Traffic Control (ATC), 400 miles away, and Haynes tried to figure out how the heck to get that airplane down.

Chicago O’Hare ATC informed Records that the nearest airport was Sioux Gateway in Sioux City, IA.  Records confirmed that yes, they did want to go to Sioux City. 

There was one big problem though.  Sioux City was about fifty miles away… to their left.  Haynes didn’t want to risk trying a left-hand turn.  To make matters worse the plane had started this crazy rollercoaster-like motion.  Up and down, up and down.  So up and down, up and down, and around to the right they went until they had made almost a 360 and were headed in the general direction of Sioux Gateway.

Sioux City ATC told Captain Haynes he was cleared to land on runway 31.

Captain Haynes chuckled and said, “You wanna be specific and make it a runway, huh?”

Since N1819U was losing altitude every time they turned, the flight crew’s plan was to make a bunch of right hand turns and hope and pray that when they came out of the last one that they would be facing a runway – any runway.  They did what is called a gravity drop – they dropped the landing gear and hoped that gravity would lock it into place.  Carefully, Fitch, Haynes, Records and Dvorak guided their crippled DC-10 down towards Sioux City.

They came out of a turn and saw, to their intense relief, Sioux City’s airport straight ahead.  The only trouble was they were facing runway 22 instead of runway 31.  Oops!  Runway 31 was longer than runway 22, which would have been helpful because N1819U had no brakes, only reverse thrust from the engines.  (As it turned out it didn’t matter anyway.) But they were out of time and altitude and had to take what they could get, which at this time was runway 22.  To complicate matters, Sioux City’s fire department had several trucks deployed to the airport, and they were all sitting on runway 22, right in the path of the doomed jet!  Several tense minutes passed as all 8 or 9 fire trucks scrambled to get out of the way.

100 feet above the ground, the right wing and the nose of the plane dropped unexpectedly.  Fitch threw the throttles all the way forward – full power! – but the engines didn’t respond in time.  N1819U’s right landing gear punched through the runway, the right wing struck the ground and sheared off.  The rest of the plane skidded off the runway, rolled over upside-down and came to rest in a corn field.    The fire engines zoomed up to it and immediately began working to put out fires and help survivors.

111 of the 296 passengers on board died in the crash.  To add to the tragedy, United Airlines was having what was called “Children’s Day” that day, where children’s airline tickets cost only a penny.  Flight 232 had 52 children on it, many of whom were traveling alone, when it smashed into the ground that hot Wednesday afternoon.  Most of the deaths were caused by injuries received during the impact itself, although people sitting in the middle of the plane, right above the central fuel tanks, died of smoke inhalation in the subsequent fire. 

The impact caused the plane to break apart in many places, allowing surviving passengers who were not badly injured to walk right out of the airplane – only to get lost in the tall corn!

The cockpit of N1819U had snapped off like the tip of a pencil.  It had been so beat up in the crash that rescuers didn’t go to it right away because it didn’t look as though anyone could have survived in there.  It took them over half an hour to get to it and realize that all four pilots were, in fact, alive! 

Protocol at the time of the crash dictated that, when the command to brace was given, “lap-children” (meaning children without a seat of their own) had to be placed on the floor and held there.  After the crash of United 232, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) suggested to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that they add to their “List of Most Wanted Safety Improvements” the recommendation that airlines require children under 2 years of age be restrained somehow.  This addition was removed in 2006.

One lap-child died in the accident (from smoke inhalation.)  Despite the fact that the child had not died from injuries sustained in the crash, the lead flight attendant on United 232, Jan Brown Lohr, was so disturbed by the fact that she had been forced to tell mothers to put their lap-children on the floor that she started a campaign for all children to be required to have their own seats on flights.

Every aviation disaster leads to safer air travel, and United 232 was certainly no exception!  The disaster lead to a change in the process of aluminum manufacturing, to ensure that future fandisks would not crack and break apart like the one in N1819U’s number 2 engine.  Also, McDonnell Douglas added “hydraulic fuses” to the hydraulic systems on all DC-10s, basically to section off any part of a hydraulic line that was punctured, severed or otherwise compromised.  This was hoped to prevent total loss of hydraulic fluid and, thereby, prevent total loss of flight controls in the future.

The NTSB said that “under the circumstances the UAL [United Airlines] flight crew performance was highly commendable and greatly exceeded reasonable expectation.” (Wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)  The complete situation faced by the flight crew that sweltering summer afternoon has been entered into at least one flight simulator.  To date, no crew has ever been able to successfully land the airplane.


The Sioux Gateway Regional Airport, Sioux City, IA.  July 2012.

An old airport building is now the Mid-America Air Museum.

The United 232 section of the Mid-America Air Museum.  That's actually the front of a Boeing 727, not a DC-10, but there were shelves and shelves of "artifacts" from the crash all around it.  And Captain Haynes' name is printed on the aircraft.

Captain Haynes' mangled seat.

The Safety Card from the DC-10.

What's left of Runway 22, with an old British airplane sitting on it.

The spot where United 232's landing gear punched through Runway 22 on impact.

The Memorial sign.

The walkway up to the memorial.

A quote.

The statue depicting Col. Dennis Nielsen carrying 3-year-old Spencer Bailey away from the crash site. 

Col. Nielsen later made this statement: 

A plaque, to honor the city.

I know I've shared this picture before, but this is me in my Mid-America Air Museum sweatshirt.  Humbled and forever changed after visiting the site of the crash of United 232.

Here is a link to a YouTube video where you can see the final approach of N1819U and hear the last few seconds of the CVR.  Warning, may be disturbing to some viewers:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTXr1QR3rbQ