
The Crash of United Flight 232 (2017) - mighty-fine
https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a10478/the-final-flight-of-united-232-16755928/
======
js2
Al Haynes passed away last week:

[https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-
fro...](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754458583/al-haynes-pilot-from-
miraculous-1989-crash-landing-has-died)

This talk by him is well worth reading:

[http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html](http://clear-
prop.org/aviation/haynes.html)

(The talk used to be available on YouTube, but was removed sometime in the
last year by copyright claim. I can't find an alternate source for it. The
video was at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZYHMMMeHic))

Denny Fitch passed away in 2012:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2012/05/10/152402632...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2012/05/10/152402632/hero-pilot-in-1989-united-crash-dies)

Fitch was interviewed by Errol Morris in an episode of "First Person" called
"Leaving the Earth." It's still on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vdkTz0zqI)

Wikipedia page on the crash:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)

~~~
mlyle
It's such an inspirational story to read about, even though a lot of people
died.

This was one of the strongest proof points that crew resource management
really worked. It was the final nail in the coffin for forces that resisted or
only reluctantly adopted CRM. It's clear that it took a whole lot of teamwork
to get that plane down.

Aviation is much safer than it was in the 80's, and the lessons learned from
relative successes like the Sioux City crash can be thanked for it.

------
refurb
Interesting random fact about this crash. On board was a man by the name of
John Stille. He had invented a very versatile carbon-carbon bond formation
that bears his name “the Stille reaction”.

His work eventually resulted in a Nobel prize for the scientists who built
upon it.

He didn’t survive the crash.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Stille](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Stille)

------
furgooswft13
Air Crash Investigation/Mayday does a pretty good dramatization of this
flight:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-
YcwWBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UM-YcwWBc)

A similar incident took place in 2003 on a DHL cargo plane after being hit by
a surface-to-air missile. Miraculously they did manage to land the plane
intact despite the total loss of hydraulics and needing to rely on engine
thrust alone to control the plane.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident)

The Mayday episode might also mention (least from my memory of last watching
it) an experimental NASA program developed sometime after this crash that
would allow "full airplane control" via computer in the event one more more
control surfaces could not be used. It achieved this by translating normal
flight inputs into sophisticated throttle manipulation of the engines, just
like the pilots on flight 232 did, but with the reflexes and modeling of a
computer.

[https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/pdf/88794main_PCA.pdf)

------
jonas21
With all the attention given to the 737 MAX lately, it's easy to forget that
airline travel is dramatically safer today than it was just 30 years ago when
this incident took place.

Fatalities per revenue passenger-mile have decreased by a factor of 15x from
1989 to 2018 (and 54x from 1970 to 2018) [1].

[1] [https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety-
evolu...](https://theblogbyjavier.com/2019/01/02/aviation-safety-
evolution-2018-update/)

~~~
jacquesm
Now assume Boeing and the FAA did their jobs and re-calculate.

~~~
ekianjo
So things get better over time but instead of recognizing the advances made,
you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have
been better?

~~~
CaptainZapp
Well, you can chalk the first 737 MAX crash up to greed, hubris, bad design
decisions and a generally rotten culture in a once great, engineering driven
company.

Not grounding the plane after that, despite the fact that Boeing must have had
the knowledge of what have gone on is corporate mass murder for profit.

 _you take the point of view that nothing is good enough because it could have
been better?_

Yes, it would definitely had been better if 346 people wouldn't have been
killed by a greedy corporate behemoth, which very obviously cares much more
about profits than about the people they killed. This point is pretty obvious
when you listen to their mealy mouthed pr bullshit.

I trust this answers your question.

------
scoot
"A fireball and smoke rose from the middle portion of the plane as banks of
seats began vaulting and somersaulting high above the flames. Some of the
banks of seats were thrown far above the fuselage in great parabolas, shot as
if from a cannon by the centrifugal force of the aft end of the fuselage
swinging in its majestic, flaming arc. What must it have been like to take
that ride, alive, aloft, alone, aware, unhurt as yet, and looking down on the
green earth?"

Holy shit.

~~~
onychomys
If there's any mercy in the universe, they would have been unconscious from
the g-forces.

------
PhasmaFelis
It was a grim situation, but I don't think the end of the article does justice
to the fact that nearly two-thirds of the passengers survived what by all
rights should have been completely unsurvivable, thanks to the sterling
performance of the flight crew and the flight instructor, as well as the
flight attendants for keeping everyone calm and prepared, and the control
tower personnel for getting a prodigious amount of local firefighters and EMTs
on the scene before the plane arrived.

It was, as Wikipedia dryly puts it, "a prime example of successful crew
resource management," and had a big influence on training practices as
airlines sought to replicate that professionalism.

United Flight 232 was an engineering disaster, but a piloting miracle.

------
vermontdevil
Here’s a computer simulation showing everything behind this crash landing

[https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww](https://youtu.be/SqDlEgZYgww)

------
eternalny1
I heard Al Haynes speak in a small group setting regarding this incident when
I was in aviation college.

The amount of composure they had to maintain to even get this aircraft near an
airport was unbelievable.

~~~
js2
Between the four pilots they had nearly 90,000 hours of flight time. Haynes
had 30,000, of which ~7,200 where on type. Records had 20,000, Dvorak 15,000
and Fitch had 23,000. Fitch had amazingly practiced flying in a simulator with
throttles-only after hearing about JAL 123.

If any crew was going to land this plane, it was this one.

~~~
dclowd9901
Amazing how that turns out. Like when Sulley had to ditch that flight into the
Hudson, and just so happened to be an instructor of water landings. What are
the odds?

~~~
libria
Could be some survivor bias here. One 747 Max happened to have a jumpseat
pilot who knew how to fix the MCAS issue and the plane flew on without issue
and thus without much media coverage. [1]

Presumably, 2 other 747 Max's didn't have enough SME's on board to save them
and crashed.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-
an...](https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/jump-seat-pilot-and-
boeing-737-max/585301/)

~~~
Ono-Sendai
737

------
joncrane
I notice that the flight instructor disobeys the captain, who says to says to
remove power from the engines, and does the opposite right as they're touching
down.

Was there ever any thought as to whether that contributed to the loss of life?

~~~
Aeolun
Presumably using only one engine would have prevented the plane from flipping
like it did, but it might have smashed into the ground harder or turned into a
fireball.

Ultimately it is impossible to say what kind of effect it would have had,
though I’m inclined to say it would likely have been better if the thrust was
applied equally.

~~~
joshAg
Thrust was applied equally in the cockpit, but jet engines don't respond
immediately and don't spool up in sync. Normally that's not an issue because
you're not making large adjustments in short spans of time, you can use
various control surfaces to compensate for the brief asynchrony, and you're
far enough away from the ground to have room to maneuver.

If you remember the Korean airlines flight that crashed at SFO a few years
back, the spool up time for the engines came into play as well. The pilots
noticed the issue with too little time for the engines to deliver more power
before the plane crashed.

~~~
mlyle
Yah. The thing is, long-period oscillation modes (phugoid, etc) exist in
aircraft but are so readily controlled by pilots with conventional controls
that they mostly don't matter from a certification standpoint (and would be
difficult to avoid, anyways).

But jet engines are slow enough that any significant control of 10-30s period
oscillations with engine thrust alone would be a real, real challenge.

------
Sharlin
This is one of those classic aviation tales I'm never not going to re-read
when they pop up, right there with the Gimli Glider [1] and the various SR-71
stories.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider)

~~~
isostatic
For me it’s BA9 that piques my amazement

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem.
All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going
again. I trust you are not in too much distress”

And for absurdity the one where the pilot was sucked out of the window and the
cabin crew had to hold on to him

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9)

------
kashprime
I wonder if the same McDonnell Douglas corporate culture behind the flawed DC
10 is what led to the MAX? It's often said Boeing's acquisition of Douglas was
more of a reverse takeover.

On a side note, I once met an aircraft investigator who called it the Death
Cruiser 10, and that it put his kids through college!

------
matt-attack
One thing I never understood as a kid, was why wasn't there better footage of
a crash. Many people at the airport knew the plane was coming in, and they had
plenty of time. Yes this wasn't 2019 where everyone has a camera in their
pocket, but nonetheless I always thought the could have done better than the
crazy shot through the chain-link fence.

~~~
steelframe
It seems to me the reason is simply that it wasn't anyone's job to make sure
there was really great footage of the crash. Everyone was too busy preparing
to respond to an imminent disaster in which nearly 300 lives were, in all
probability, about to be lost.

"Hey Bob, you have that VHS recorder stowed away somewhere in the locker room,
don't you? This guy on something called a website 30 years in the future is
going to really wish that we got great footage of a horrible crash in which
dozens of people die. Why don't you run out a little closer to the airstrip
where a nearly completely out-of-control airplane flying at an insane speed is
about to slam into the ground? Future spectators will really appreciate it."

~~~
matt-attack
I'd image it would have provided more than just lulz. It'd think a video like
that would be of enormous engineering value in crash-dynamics.

~~~
dev_tty01
They may have felt it would be too disrespectful to film the death of so many
people.

------
DataJunkie
IIRC, several policy changes resulted from this crash:

\- Pathway lighting for exits

\- Reminding passengers that the nearest exit may be behind you (not all
airlines remind you)

\- Changes in how lap children are dealt with during an emergency.

------
pablobaz
This book about the incident is a great read.
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster-
Survival/...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flight-232-Story-Disaster-
Survival/dp/0393240029)

It goes into detail about the causes of the crash, the stories of the
passengers before and after the crash.

------
jrnichols
I also remember something about Sioux City itself - the hospital was at shift
change, so they were able to have just about 2x the normal amount of staff
available.

They had enough advance warning and were able to start getting more fire/EMS
resources heading that way as well.

------
jacquesm
111 people died on that flight according to Wikipedia, more amazingly, 185
survived.

------
FabHK
Would ditching (assuming there was a large body of water near) or landing in a
huge cornfield (like Ural Airlines 178 out of ZIA (Moscow-Zhukovsky)) have
made it better or worse?

~~~
dralley
Disclaimer: this is total speculation from someone completely unqualified to
speculate about aviation

Given the violence of the crash due to the total lack of fine control, likely
worse.

A fire in the cornfield could have killed many more people as would the lack
of emergency firefighting and medical attention.

A plane that broke apart in the water would likely just lead to most
passengers quickly drowning. It might work if the plane remained intact, but
that requires landing level and slow, something they had no ability to
control.

------
mrhappyunhappy
Did the kids without seatbelts all die? I can't imagine what I would do as a
parent of one of those babies if I were told to put them on the ground.
Like... Hell no!

------
DrScump
Note that this _article_ is from 2017, but the _crash-landing_ was in 1989.

------
furioushatter
so back in the day we had to watch film footage of this as part of the
training for working on Boeing aircraft electrical wirings.

------
RichardCA
Not sure if anyone's posted this yet.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL13-nYfnOQ)

------
TCR19
I'd never read about this flight before. Thanks for the share. Tragic about
the loss of life.

~~~
projectileboy
I was a senior in high school in a suburb outside Minneapolis, and I remember
it very well. What was so heartbreaking is that it looked like they were going
to be fine, right up until the very end when the right wingtip went down, dug
in and they started cartwheeling. After seeing that, I was amazed that anyone
survived.

------
davidf18
"When the plane pancaked onto the runway, more than 10,000 pounds of kerosene
came out all at once from the ruptured right wing and turned to mist."

I wonder why they didn't "dump the fuel" just before the crash to have avoided
the fire. I thought this was standard operating procedure to dump fuel before
crash landings.

I had read about the crash awhile ago and as I recall many people that died
died of smoke inhalation from the fire and not the impact itself.

~~~
roelschroeven
Apparently they did dump some of the fuel: "While dumping some of the excess
fuel, ..."
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Cra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Crash_landing))

Possibly the pilots were reluctant to dump too much fuel, since the two
remaining engines were their only method of steering the plane. A lack of fuel
was the last thing they needed.

~~~
rconti
Interesting. Or perhaps it would create more balance issues. Regardless, it
sounds like it was considered by someone with more experience flying airliners
than myself.

------
mr_sam-v
Damn I never heard of this and ngl that's pretty dramatically amazing

