NINE PASSAGERS WERE SUCKED OUT OF A UNITED AIRLINES 747 AFTER ITS CARGO DOORS BLEW OFF
The Boeing 747 lifted off from Honolulu with 337 passengers and 18 crew members, bound for Auckland, New Zealand. Sixteen minutes into the flight, as the plane climbed through 22,000 feet over the dark Pacific Ocean, a loud thud shook the aircraft. A second and a half later, the forward cargo door blew off. The explosive decompression ripped a hole in the right side of the fuselage, the cabin floor collapsed, and two entire rows of seats were ejected into the night. Nine passengers vanished. Their bodies were never found.
Inside the cockpit, the crew thought a bomb had gone off. It had only been two months since Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie. Flight Engineer Randal Thomas left the cockpit to see how bad it was. He came back pale. A massive section of the fuselage was simply gone. Two of the four engines were destroyed. The emergency oxygen system was knocked out. And they were still over the ocean in the middle of the night.
Captain Cronin turned the crippled 747 around and headed back to Honolulu. The plane was carrying a full load of fuel for the long Pacific crossing, making it far heavier than normal. He landed using a non standard flap setting that no training manual had prepared him for. Every single one of the 346 remaining passengers and crew walked off that plane alive.
United Airlines later tried to recreate the same scenario in a flight simulator. They ran it over and over. They could never land it successfully.
The investigation revealed that Boeing had known about flaws in the 747 cargo door locking mechanism since 1975. The fix cost $3,000 and took 15 hours, but United delayed the work to avoid disrupting flight schedules. N4713U was scheduled for the upgrade in April 1989. It never made it. The crew received the Secretary's Award for Heroism, and Captain Cronin's skill on what was nearly his final flight saved 346 lives.
Wikipedia - United Airlines Flight 811
Inside the cockpit, the crew thought a bomb had gone off. It had only been two months since Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie. Flight Engineer Randal Thomas left the cockpit to see how bad it was. He came back pale. A massive section of the fuselage was simply gone. Two of the four engines were destroyed. The emergency oxygen system was knocked out. And they were still over the ocean in the middle of the night.
Captain Cronin turned the crippled 747 around and headed back to Honolulu. The plane was carrying a full load of fuel for the long Pacific crossing, making it far heavier than normal. He landed using a non standard flap setting that no training manual had prepared him for. Every single one of the 346 remaining passengers and crew walked off that plane alive.
United Airlines later tried to recreate the same scenario in a flight simulator. They ran it over and over. They could never land it successfully.
The investigation revealed that Boeing had known about flaws in the 747 cargo door locking mechanism since 1975. The fix cost $3,000 and took 15 hours, but United delayed the work to avoid disrupting flight schedules. N4713U was scheduled for the upgrade in April 1989. It never made it. The crew received the Secretary's Award for Heroism, and Captain Cronin's skill on what was nearly his final flight saved 346 lives.
Wikipedia - United Airlines Flight 811
THE FLIGHT THAT LANDED SAFELY - BUT NO ONE SURVIVDED - SAUDIA FLIGHT 163
It was August 19, 1980. A Lockheed L-1011 TriStar took off from Riyadh carrying 301 people. Most were pilgrims heading to Mecca. Some had never been on a plane before.
Seven minutes after takeoff, an alarm sounded. Smoke in the rear cargo hold. The crew spent five critical minutes debating whether the warning was real. By the time they turned back, the fire had already burned through the cabin floor. A flight attendant radioed the cockpit and said passengers were fighting in the aisles. She could not get past the middle of the plane.
At 9:35 PM, the aircraft touched down in Riyadh. Smooth. Controlled. From the tower, it looked completely normal.
But instead of stopping on the runway, the captain kept taxiing for nearly three minutes. Then the plane stopped but the engines kept running for another three minutes. This was catastrophic. The L-1011 had plug type doors that open inward first. With the engines running, the cabin stayed pressurized, making the doors nearly impossible to open from inside or outside.
No evacuation was ever called. No one could get out. No one could get in.
Firefighters rushed to the plane but had never fought an aircraft fire before. They did not know how to open an L-1011's doors. It took them 23 minutes. When they finally got one open, they shouted into the darkness. No one answered. Seconds later, fresh air triggered a flashover. Trapped gases ignited and fire tore through the cabin.
All 301 people were dead. Autopsies confirmed every one died from smoke inhalation, not burns. They were almost certainly alive at touchdown. Every body was found in the forward half of the cabin, pressed against exits that never opened.
The pilots were found still in their seats.
It is the only known case of a widebody jet landing safely with no survivors. It changed aviation forever.
