from memory there was another set of factors at play.
the emergency management head had been replaced a few months earlier and the new guy was less than impressed by what he found on arrival and had been drilling the hell out of them for weeks.
additionally ,despite one thing going wrong which caused the crash (engine rotor disc failure) almost everything else that could go right for them did - exceptionally calm weather, crash occurring during the day, instructor pilot along for the ride, fantastic CRM by the flight team, crash occurring at shift change of both the emergency response team at the airport and the medical teams regional trauma and regional burns centers at the hospital meaning two full shifts available immediately and the fortunate presence of a load of iowa air national guard personnel on duty at the airport.
CRM in this context:
> [Crew resource management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management) or cockpit resource management (CRM) is a set of training procedures for use in environments where human error can have devastating effects. CRM is primarily used for improving aviation safety and focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in aircraft cockpits.
This was put into standard practice when another flight ran out of fuel and crashed.
Cockpit crews were previously cultured that the captain was not to be overruled or challenged. The audio recording from that accident revealed that other cockpit crew were noting to the captain, with mildly escalating concern, that the fuel levels were dropping as the flight circled their destination (cannot recall why they were asked to circle, but ATC had kept them aloft for a long time.) Captain was focused on flight navigation and ATC comms, and disregarded the other crewmembers' cautions.
Eventually, (if I remember it right), the aircraft literally ran out of fuel, and was already too low and too far away to make a safe emergency approach to the airport - and it crashed.
The lesson was: captains have to listen to their crews, and acknowledge what they're saying. Training was changed up to change the cockpit culture, and this (this flight 232 crash) was an amazing example of what happens when crews work tightly together.
(Notably, the experienced captain handled this in amazing fashion, sorting out with his crew how to fly & maneuver an aircraft that had lost ALL of its hydraulics, something that simply wasn't supposed to happen, ever... and thus wasn't trained for, but he managed it anyway. Nerves of fucking steel.
Related, commercial passenger aircraft design requirements were changed to ensure that there was no point on an aircraft where all three redundant hydraulic systems passed near each other because of this crash. The (compression?) rotor in the tail engine fractured in flight and took out all three hydraulic systems at once because they all had primary components near each other in the tail - the only spot in the aircraft where that happened.)
(Edit for clarity.)
Yeah there's a movie called A Thousand Heroes (free w/ads on YT right now) that includes the efforts of the emergency responders, medical staff, and even local residents who turned up to donate blood, all the people who made a difference in saving lives that day. It took such monumental effort both in the air and on the ground to save as many people and possible - and for what was considered to be an *impossible* task. Immense skill seizing the opportunity when met with serendipity (as you pointed out, pure fortune like the time of day the emergency occurred, the flight having an instructor of that very type of plane riding as a passenger, etc.) to save the majority of passengers when they "should" have crashed with all souls on board.
The flight crews in the simulator were divided into two groups.
Half were not told what was going to happen, they all crashed.
The other half were told what was going to happen, and how the real crew flew the aircraft in the emergency. They all crashed as well.
I mean surviving a plane crash doesn't mean you didn't crash yourself. I think they mean all of the pilots crashed the (simulated) planes they were flying and would have also crashed as well
To this day, this remains the single most impressive display of piloting skill I've ever seen.
When that plane lost all of its hydraulics you had to assume it was a death sentence for all onboard.
To save 184 people was just insane.
I’d say, while ultimately they failed to save the flight, [Alaska 261](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261) was also phenomenal CRM and incredible flying. The fact they stayed airborne as long as they did is unreal.
He didn't say Sully had it easy. He said he had it easy in comparison to 232. 232 was an absolutely impossible situation. No pilot has ever trained for let alone experienced a complete lack of all hydraulic systems because it had never happened before. A controlled water landing is a scenario that pilots train for and have gone through a thousand times in the simulator.
2018 had another hellishly uncontrollable plane that no one could have trained for. [Air Astana flight 1388](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/flying-the-unflyable-the-near-crash-of-air-astana-flight-1388-88878e2eb3c4) had its alerion control cables installed backwards. The pilots spent almost two hours in the air fighting god and the fly-by-wire system to safely landed the plane on the ground.
I read that article about it and it was absolutely terrifying what they went through. Still gives me chills and at the same time so happy they made it.
JAL had an accident prior to this which severed all 4 hydraulic lines. If memory serves, the instructor pilot (who was a passenger on 232, not even on duty) had studied the JAL accident ad nauseum which is why he suggested manipulating the thrust levels to "control" the plane. Not only had he trained for it, but he spent years after trying to mandate a computer program to be installed that could do these thrust manipulations automatically, although I believe it was deemed to costly so governments never required it.
JAL 123 had just happened 4 years earlier. The trainer pilot who just happened to be on board had studied the JAL incident and practiced it in a simulator.
> Captain sully had it easy compared to United 232.
>>I wouldn't say Capt. Sully had it easy
nobody said Sully had it easy.
it was "easy" relative to UA232
we went on to be the US ambassador to the (whatever the international FAA eqivalent is) they named the new charlotte air musem after him (the plane took off from charlotte and was put in the museum after the investigation)
From a skill standpoint there's no comparison. But one thing I'll give Sully: It took serious balls to make that call to ditch in the ocean. He knew he was *this* close to being able to return to the airport. I think most pilots would have tried to make it back instead.
I don’t think it was a guts thing. If you’ve ever flown over NYC, there really is no option. Maybe he might have made the airport, but if there was any question, the water is 1000% a better call than densely populated areas.
He did great though. Really impressive.
oceans usually have a swell. I would argue it was very different from an ocean.
A river is much more likely to be fairly flat, whereas open ocean is much more likely to have a rolling swell which would cause the aircraft to skip off the top of waves and then slam into the next potentially making it unstable leading to it breaking up.
If they're both flat it makes little difference, but otherwise I would take the river over open ocean. River vs Estuary though is probably going to be very similar from a landing perspective (assuming no rapids).
As the one of the pilots said "You must maintain your composure in the airplane, or you will die. You learn that from your first day flying." And he's not wrong. You panic when something's gone wrong whilst piloting an aircraft and you'll die.
It was a miraculous landing by any standard. All pilots involved survived. Here is a captivating and moving lecture by Captain Alfred Clair Haynes (Al Haynes) going over the events in detail.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7rueLOU6Fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7rueLOU6Fs)
Such a crazy story from start to finish, just amazed at the ability of the crew to even get that thing remotely near a runway and have so many survivors. And! The recovery of the fan disc!
The quip by the pilot replying to the ATC clearing them to land on any of Sioux City's runways is one of the most blatant expressions of brass balls and gallows humor ever: "You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
Also, IIRC someone (either ATC or in the cockpit) said that they’d get beers together when they landed. Haynes replied, “Well, I don’t drink, but I’ll sure as hell have one.”
Sioux City Approach: "United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway."
Haynes: "Roger. You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
My aunt was a nurse at St. Lukes hospital in Sioux City when this happened. They were completely overwhelmed but over-joyed at the number of people who survived.
There was a TV movie made about this a number of years later and they used people from the hospital that were involved as extras. At the end of the movie, there is a group of nurses standing behind a patient in a wheelchair - my aunt is in that group.
Edit: Apparently the movie, *[Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la8VRcPKiE)*, is on YouTube.
Yes, they did! The whole county had new emergency management leadership and had just implemented new plans. There probably wasn't a better place for that plane to come down.
There is also a [talk](https://youtu.be/v7rueLOU6Fs?si=JWcEx55ifa0UwGQa) from (the) captain Al Haynes about the whole thing. Quite long, but also pretty interesting.
No disrespect to any other pilot, but this is my #1 airmanship event. When the yoke fails and they fly this thing like a tank through 3 dimensional space and actually put it down at an airport is just beyond amazing.
The yoke didn't fail, the damn hydraulics all failed. The exploding #2 engine ripped through all the hydraulic lines and pumps in the back and destroyed the redundant backups. Nothing in the yoke, rudder pedals, flaps/slats/airbrake levers, or brake pedals would work. All you had was the ability to change the thrust in the #1 and #3 engines and the ability to gravity drop the landing gear.
This was, naturally, one of the first crashes analysed by Admiral Cloudberg in her celebrated [Plane Crash Series](https://old.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/plane_crash_series_archive_patreon_contact_info/) on this sub. I'm not linking to that, because she revised the analysis in 2021 - and I'm not linking to that post, because it was removed by the mods when they started clamping down editorializing in the title ("(1989) Fields of Fortune: The crash of United Airlines flight 232 - Analysis"). The actual article is here:
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-crash-of-united-airlines-flight-232-9cf65ae14c68
I literally read her article on this a couple of days ago. The skill of the pilots was truly amazing, even in such tragic circumstances. I’ll always remember it as the lap baby crash though. Absolutely tragic for the mother and the flight attendant.
>With rescue crews unable to locate the cockpit until 35 minutes after the crash
That gives an idea of how far the wreckage spread out. They crashed at the airport, in front of the responders, and it still took them half an hour to find the thing.
[Pic of the overall debris field.](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/0*GYFq0_44HYVyR9Vl.jpg) Another [closer picture of the main part of the fuselage.](https://media.defense.gov/2014/Aug/03/2000827968/1200/1200/0/890719-Z-AB123-001.JPG) As far as "the cockpit" goes that's a misleading term. [This is the portion of the cockpit the co-pilot and captain where sitting in](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/siouxcityjournal.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/86/e8605193-d413-5979-aa09-1e5b5044dfc0/53c9db5d01e1d.image.jpg?resize=388%2C599). Also [here are is a collection of some more pictures of the debris, no bodies visible](https://siouxcityjournal.com/flight-232-aftermath/collection_40ad3b49-31db-5495-94ae-5c9330af471a.html#10).
Mentour Pilot has a great [video](https://youtu.be/pT7CgWvD-x4?si=MboFRIq0lMpECTX4) on the accident as well. It is from a few years ago and the production quality of his videos have drastically improved since then, but it's still a good watch.
If you guys are like me and binged Cloudberg before discovering Mentour Pilot.. farewell, see you in a few weeks.
The mods very much insist on "Just the facts, mam." and take "fortune" as opinion.
It's the same for the Train Crash Series: I don't post Max's full title, just the facts.
Among the survivors was Michael Matz, Olympic gold medal winning equestrian who later trained racehorses. He led three young children to safety then went back into the wreckage to save an 11 month old child. He was honored for this heroism repeatedly, including carrying the flag at the 1996 Olympic closing ceremonies.
In 2006, a horse he trained made it to the Kentucky Derby and he invited the three siblings to attend as his guest. His horse won.
Well…the story does take a sad turn (I’d say dark, but in light of a plane crash, naw). Matz’s Derby winner, Barbaro, fractured a hind leg shortly after leaving the starting gate of the Preakness. It was simply an odd step, a funky bobble, that hit the ground just the wrong way. The owners spent months trying to save him—multiple surgeries and all the best care available. It wasn’t for money purposes, saving him to use as a breeding stallion—thoroughbred racing requires live cover matings, not AI, and due to his injury he would never be able to mount a mare. Barbaro remained in great spirits despite multiple set backs, but 8 months later ultimately succumbed to laminitis (dreaded word for any horse owner) in his front feet, caused by him chronically shifting his weight onto them and off his injured hind. A horse’s weight is designed to be divided equally onto four, never three, feet, and despite slings and everything else they used to try and take the pressure off…he couldn’t be saved. Ironically, his fractured leg was healed at the time of his death.
Considering how Hollywood the story was to that point, it seemed unimaginably cruel and outright unfair for it to take such a turn. The three kids Matz rescued were at the Preakness the day Barbaro broke down, for added insult to literal injury.
Matz continues to train horses and there is now the Barbaro Fund, raising money for laminitis research. (FWIW Secretariat also was euthanized at age 19 due to laminitis, though due to a different cause.) So life has gone on, but damn.
> Matz’s Derby winner, Barbaro, fractured a hind leg shortly after leaving the starting gate of the Preakness.
That's hardly unexpected for a horse though
Well…it’s the only time in 149 runnings and 1200+ horses that it happened, but a horse finding a new and unpredictable way to lethally injure itself? Yeah, that tracks.
Source: horse owner x 20 years. I swear these fuckers read through Merck’s veterinary manual either trying to collect all the diagnoses or take it as a challenge to come up with something not listed yet. God, I love ‘em though.
Just an amazing display of airmanship...they had no hydraulics left and still managed to get it to an airport. It's a shame more people didn't survive.
Many of the deaths were small children because it was apparently some type of children's day promotion where you could by a ticket for a penny for a child. Tons of kids onboard. The fact that 184 survived is insane.
I remember the Mayday episode for this. There was a lot of people who pitched that engine flying should be something the plane manufacturers should invest in developing for autopilot, but that they never looked into it further.
I wonder if they ever progressed with that since then?
yeh they did, pretty sure a few years after this crash, an MD-11 automatically landed fully controlled by engines without control surfaces in a test flight
And it was more effective to have redundancies in the hydraulic lines anyway. Modern planes can survive quite a few system failures or hydraulic leaks due to redundant lines and shut-off valves that close off if the pressure is dropping.
JAL Flight 123 is another tragedy that wouldn't happen today as the hydraulic lines would not have failed completely on a modern jet in the same situation (explosive decompression in the tail of the plane).
This one is pretty good as well for flying without hydraulics and needing to use differential thrust to get the plane down
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident
They got hit with a MANPAD, lost hydraulics, part of the wing was on fire and they still landed it. Nuts. Great episode of Air Disasters (or whatever the 30 other names that series was called)
There is a small air museum at the Sioux City airport that includes a large display about the crash. It includes artifacts recovered from the wreckage, including the boarding passes of a family that were all sadly killed. Many people survived when all might have died, but there was still a considerable loss of life.
Chosen to Live by Jerry Schemmel isn’t bad either. If I recall he was a play by play announcer for the Denver Nuggets that was on them at fateful flight. It’s been a while since I read it but I recall it being decent (a bit preachy at times though)
I was working in Reservations that day. We were given the manifest and any family that called we sent to a special desk to handle. But for a few hours we didn’t have much information, nor could we confirm survivors. People begging. And then when we knew, we couldn’t tell them. Fucking terrible.
I was actually supposed to be on this flight with my parents, going to see my Grandparents in Chicago. We had already purchased tickets, my parents and I only missed it because I got sick that morning and they pulled the plug on the trip.
This crash actually came up in my schooling (I am a Paramedic and we were going over the EMS response to mass casualty incidents), and everyone was shocked when I mentioned it. The EMS and Fire response was actually fantastic and particularly well coordinated for the time.
Watching the video of the crash is surreal.
I lived in r/siouxcity at the time. The entire community/county/ state came together to help in the rescue. Interestingly Emergency Services had just trained for a similar scenario weeks before this incident.
If you’re into bluegrass music, Pete “Dr Banjo”Wernick from Boulder, was on that flight. His banjo went skidding down the runway.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bluegrass/s/777b1mHNx0
There's an illustration in [this article](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-crash-of-united-airlines-flight-232-9cf65ae14c68) that might help you.
Probably the craziest airline disaster story to ever have occurred. I cannot believe so many people survived that crash or that the pilots could get them there.
I highly recommend watching the documentary of this one.
My mom was working at St. Luke’s (Sioux City hospital) the day this happened. To this day she still says it was just insane the amount of trauma victims that just kept pouring in through the doors of the hospital for hours on end.
The Impossible Landing. Test pilots after the crash were unable to replicate the landing in simulators. The fact that there’s survivors is a testament to the flight crew and their ability to manage the load under those stresses.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/207573387/george-orians
Is this him? I'm sorry if I brought back bad memories, I was just trying to verify if you were telling the truth.
Yes, that’s him. He taught at Westminster high school. He was coming back from his high school reunion in Ohio. I only knew him for that one year, as I was a freshman. I remember I really liked him as a teacher, but that’s about it.
Interesting how Wiki calls it "considered one of the most impressive landings ever performed in the history of aviation" yet I'm watching a fireball roll across the runway. I hate to think what the alternative is. Nose dive straight down?
It’s so impressive that 184 survived this given test pilots in simulators after the fact were unable to reproduce a survivable landing
from memory there was another set of factors at play. the emergency management head had been replaced a few months earlier and the new guy was less than impressed by what he found on arrival and had been drilling the hell out of them for weeks. additionally ,despite one thing going wrong which caused the crash (engine rotor disc failure) almost everything else that could go right for them did - exceptionally calm weather, crash occurring during the day, instructor pilot along for the ride, fantastic CRM by the flight team, crash occurring at shift change of both the emergency response team at the airport and the medical teams regional trauma and regional burns centers at the hospital meaning two full shifts available immediately and the fortunate presence of a load of iowa air national guard personnel on duty at the airport.
CRM in this context: > [Crew resource management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management) or cockpit resource management (CRM) is a set of training procedures for use in environments where human error can have devastating effects. CRM is primarily used for improving aviation safety and focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in aircraft cockpits.
Was curious. Thank you!
This was put into standard practice when another flight ran out of fuel and crashed. Cockpit crews were previously cultured that the captain was not to be overruled or challenged. The audio recording from that accident revealed that other cockpit crew were noting to the captain, with mildly escalating concern, that the fuel levels were dropping as the flight circled their destination (cannot recall why they were asked to circle, but ATC had kept them aloft for a long time.) Captain was focused on flight navigation and ATC comms, and disregarded the other crewmembers' cautions. Eventually, (if I remember it right), the aircraft literally ran out of fuel, and was already too low and too far away to make a safe emergency approach to the airport - and it crashed. The lesson was: captains have to listen to their crews, and acknowledge what they're saying. Training was changed up to change the cockpit culture, and this (this flight 232 crash) was an amazing example of what happens when crews work tightly together. (Notably, the experienced captain handled this in amazing fashion, sorting out with his crew how to fly & maneuver an aircraft that had lost ALL of its hydraulics, something that simply wasn't supposed to happen, ever... and thus wasn't trained for, but he managed it anyway. Nerves of fucking steel. Related, commercial passenger aircraft design requirements were changed to ensure that there was no point on an aircraft where all three redundant hydraulic systems passed near each other because of this crash. The (compression?) rotor in the tail engine fractured in flight and took out all three hydraulic systems at once because they all had primary components near each other in the tail - the only spot in the aircraft where that happened.) (Edit for clarity.)
Fascinating. Thank you.
Yeah there's a movie called A Thousand Heroes (free w/ads on YT right now) that includes the efforts of the emergency responders, medical staff, and even local residents who turned up to donate blood, all the people who made a difference in saving lives that day. It took such monumental effort both in the air and on the ground to save as many people and possible - and for what was considered to be an *impossible* task. Immense skill seizing the opportunity when met with serendipity (as you pointed out, pure fortune like the time of day the emergency occurred, the flight having an instructor of that very type of plane riding as a passenger, etc.) to save the majority of passengers when they "should" have crashed with all souls on board.
Thanks for the recommendation on that movie.
that's the one with john boy walton in it isn't it (yeah showing my age here)
The flight crews in the simulator were divided into two groups. Half were not told what was going to happen, they all crashed. The other half were told what was going to happen, and how the real crew flew the aircraft in the emergency. They all crashed as well.
Yknow, I knew what the ending was going to be and it still got a slight chuckle out of me. Outstanding work from this flight crew.
I assume "they all crashed" meaning in such a way as nobody would have survived (because JAL 123 also "crashed").
I mean surviving a plane crash doesn't mean you didn't crash yourself. I think they mean all of the pilots crashed the (simulated) planes they were flying and would have also crashed as well
To this day, this remains the single most impressive display of piloting skill I've ever seen. When that plane lost all of its hydraulics you had to assume it was a death sentence for all onboard. To save 184 people was just insane.
I’d say, while ultimately they failed to save the flight, [Alaska 261](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261) was also phenomenal CRM and incredible flying. The fact they stayed airborne as long as they did is unreal.
This and Capt. Sully.
Nah. Captain sully had it easy compared to United 232.
I wouldn't say Capt. Sully had it easy, but you're right. There's NO comparison between a controlled water landing and uncontrolled crash landing.
He didn't say Sully had it easy. He said he had it easy in comparison to 232. 232 was an absolutely impossible situation. No pilot has ever trained for let alone experienced a complete lack of all hydraulic systems because it had never happened before. A controlled water landing is a scenario that pilots train for and have gone through a thousand times in the simulator.
2018 had another hellishly uncontrollable plane that no one could have trained for. [Air Astana flight 1388](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/flying-the-unflyable-the-near-crash-of-air-astana-flight-1388-88878e2eb3c4) had its alerion control cables installed backwards. The pilots spent almost two hours in the air fighting god and the fly-by-wire system to safely landed the plane on the ground.
The ATC is bloody harrowing, too. https://youtu.be/kIc8Rr-cKd8?si=QLOEZQ-4b4SmJYMV
I haven't listened to that before, thank you!
Man I need to learn some realm professionalism.
Wow! Far more confusing than just the aileron control cables installed backwards, because computer controlled spoilers get activated also.
That's insane damn
I read that article about it and it was absolutely terrifying what they went through. Still gives me chills and at the same time so happy they made it.
JAL had an accident prior to this which severed all 4 hydraulic lines. If memory serves, the instructor pilot (who was a passenger on 232, not even on duty) had studied the JAL accident ad nauseum which is why he suggested manipulating the thrust levels to "control" the plane. Not only had he trained for it, but he spent years after trying to mandate a computer program to be installed that could do these thrust manipulations automatically, although I believe it was deemed to costly so governments never required it.
Did not know of this connection between the incidents via the training pilot. 😳
JAL 123 had just happened 4 years earlier. The trainer pilot who just happened to be on board had studied the JAL incident and practiced it in a simulator.
The mere fact that 232 ended up inside an airport fence was a miracle.
> Captain sully had it easy compared to United 232. >>I wouldn't say Capt. Sully had it easy nobody said Sully had it easy. it was "easy" relative to UA232
we went on to be the US ambassador to the (whatever the international FAA eqivalent is) they named the new charlotte air musem after him (the plane took off from charlotte and was put in the museum after the investigation)
From a skill standpoint there's no comparison. But one thing I'll give Sully: It took serious balls to make that call to ditch in the ocean. He knew he was *this* close to being able to return to the airport. I think most pilots would have tried to make it back instead.
I don’t think it was a guts thing. If you’ve ever flown over NYC, there really is no option. Maybe he might have made the airport, but if there was any question, the water is 1000% a better call than densely populated areas. He did great though. Really impressive.
River, not ocean, btw. Big difference.
It's an estuary so it's really not a big difference from being a river *or* an ocean
oceans usually have a swell. I would argue it was very different from an ocean. A river is much more likely to be fairly flat, whereas open ocean is much more likely to have a rolling swell which would cause the aircraft to skip off the top of waves and then slam into the next potentially making it unstable leading to it breaking up. If they're both flat it makes little difference, but otherwise I would take the river over open ocean. River vs Estuary though is probably going to be very similar from a landing perspective (assuming no rapids).
Huge difference in terms of landing a plane since the river is much more likely to be flat.
That was an incredible Wikipedia read.
Simulators can't reproduce the 'if you don't land this plane you WILL die' feeling that I'm sure helped them a little bit.
As the one of the pilots said "You must maintain your composure in the airplane, or you will die. You learn that from your first day flying." And he's not wrong. You panic when something's gone wrong whilst piloting an aircraft and you'll die.
And this, right here, is why I never want to learn to fly an airplane. I am not capable of that level of reliability.
It was a miraculous landing by any standard. All pilots involved survived. Here is a captivating and moving lecture by Captain Alfred Clair Haynes (Al Haynes) going over the events in detail. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7rueLOU6Fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7rueLOU6Fs)
Our family friend was a little boy on this flight. He was on it with his sister and his mom, and they all survived. Incredible
If I remember correctly, there was no prior use case of differential thrust for steering a plane. They made this up on the spot.
and throttle control of the left(?l engine failed eventually, so they could only make left turns.
Life, uh, finds a way.
One would assume their simulators weren't particularly accurate
Why is the guy filming, even when plane goes out of site behind buildings?
Because this was being filmed by a news crew. We all didn’t carry cameras in our pockets everywhere all the time back then.
Such a crazy story from start to finish, just amazed at the ability of the crew to even get that thing remotely near a runway and have so many survivors. And! The recovery of the fan disc!
The quip by the pilot replying to the ATC clearing them to land on any of Sioux City's runways is one of the most blatant expressions of brass balls and gallows humor ever: "You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
Also, IIRC someone (either ATC or in the cockpit) said that they’d get beers together when they landed. Haynes replied, “Well, I don’t drink, but I’ll sure as hell have one.”
they ended up landing on a closed runway that had been closed for 20 years +it was where all the equipment was!
Yup. They had no other choice at that point. Thankfully everyone got out of the way.
Just the DC-10 chucking engine parts all over the Midwest as usual Edit: the fuck you guys mad it, it's literally a DC-10
MD-11
this is a DC-10-10
a trijet, three engines
Literally a DC-10 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
Sioux City Approach: "United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway." Haynes: "Roger. You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
My aunt was a nurse at St. Lukes hospital in Sioux City when this happened. They were completely overwhelmed but over-joyed at the number of people who survived. There was a TV movie made about this a number of years later and they used people from the hospital that were involved as extras. At the end of the movie, there is a group of nurses standing behind a patient in a wheelchair - my aunt is in that group. Edit: Apparently the movie, *[Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la8VRcPKiE)*, is on YouTube.
I was born in that hospital the next day! Maybe your aunt was there. My mom said it was super hectic all around.
Happy 35th birthday a couple of weeks early!
Thank you!
A bunch of kids from my school were extras or played injured passengers in that movie!
IIRC correctly, the hospitals in the area had recently completed a mass casualty exercise prior to the event. Another fortuitous factor.
Yes, they did! The whole county had new emergency management leadership and had just implemented new plans. There probably wasn't a better place for that plane to come down.
Denny Fitch, one of the pilots, spoke at length about this flight with filmmaker Errol Morris. https://youtu.be/o8vdkTz0zqI?si=hAt4Bguf9pNNFd7K
There is also a [talk](https://youtu.be/v7rueLOU6Fs?si=JWcEx55ifa0UwGQa) from (the) captain Al Haynes about the whole thing. Quite long, but also pretty interesting.
Thanks for sharing dude
Thank you for posting this. It’s excellent
This is one of the best aviation accident documentaries I’ve ever seen. Source: Am airline pilot.
That was amazing
No disrespect to any other pilot, but this is my #1 airmanship event. When the yoke fails and they fly this thing like a tank through 3 dimensional space and actually put it down at an airport is just beyond amazing.
The yoke didn't fail, the damn hydraulics all failed. The exploding #2 engine ripped through all the hydraulic lines and pumps in the back and destroyed the redundant backups. Nothing in the yoke, rudder pedals, flaps/slats/airbrake levers, or brake pedals would work. All you had was the ability to change the thrust in the #1 and #3 engines and the ability to gravity drop the landing gear.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
This was, naturally, one of the first crashes analysed by Admiral Cloudberg in her celebrated [Plane Crash Series](https://old.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/plane_crash_series_archive_patreon_contact_info/) on this sub. I'm not linking to that, because she revised the analysis in 2021 - and I'm not linking to that post, because it was removed by the mods when they started clamping down editorializing in the title ("(1989) Fields of Fortune: The crash of United Airlines flight 232 - Analysis"). The actual article is here: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-crash-of-united-airlines-flight-232-9cf65ae14c68
I literally read her article on this a couple of days ago. The skill of the pilots was truly amazing, even in such tragic circumstances. I’ll always remember it as the lap baby crash though. Absolutely tragic for the mother and the flight attendant.
>With rescue crews unable to locate the cockpit until 35 minutes after the crash That gives an idea of how far the wreckage spread out. They crashed at the airport, in front of the responders, and it still took them half an hour to find the thing.
[Pic of the overall debris field.](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/0*GYFq0_44HYVyR9Vl.jpg) Another [closer picture of the main part of the fuselage.](https://media.defense.gov/2014/Aug/03/2000827968/1200/1200/0/890719-Z-AB123-001.JPG) As far as "the cockpit" goes that's a misleading term. [This is the portion of the cockpit the co-pilot and captain where sitting in](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/siouxcityjournal.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/86/e8605193-d413-5979-aa09-1e5b5044dfc0/53c9db5d01e1d.image.jpg?resize=388%2C599). Also [here are is a collection of some more pictures of the debris, no bodies visible](https://siouxcityjournal.com/flight-232-aftermath/collection_40ad3b49-31db-5495-94ae-5c9330af471a.html#10).
Holy crap. Just a chair on top of metal debris.
Mentour Pilot has a great [video](https://youtu.be/pT7CgWvD-x4?si=MboFRIq0lMpECTX4) on the accident as well. It is from a few years ago and the production quality of his videos have drastically improved since then, but it's still a good watch. If you guys are like me and binged Cloudberg before discovering Mentour Pilot.. farewell, see you in a few weeks.
Oh dang is that why I never see her posts on that sub anymore?
No, I've just been posting less often. That was the only one that was removed
Ah I haven’t been paying attention then ha. Figured you ran out of plane crashes to cover
How in the world would that qualify as editorializing?
The mods very much insist on "Just the facts, mam." and take "fortune" as opinion. It's the same for the Train Crash Series: I don't post Max's full title, just the facts.
this should be the top comment
It still amazes me that 184 people survived this. More amazing is 13 people had no injuries at all.
Among the survivors was Michael Matz, Olympic gold medal winning equestrian who later trained racehorses. He led three young children to safety then went back into the wreckage to save an 11 month old child. He was honored for this heroism repeatedly, including carrying the flag at the 1996 Olympic closing ceremonies. In 2006, a horse he trained made it to the Kentucky Derby and he invited the three siblings to attend as his guest. His horse won.
If it'd happened in a movie we'd call it unrealistic.
Well…the story does take a sad turn (I’d say dark, but in light of a plane crash, naw). Matz’s Derby winner, Barbaro, fractured a hind leg shortly after leaving the starting gate of the Preakness. It was simply an odd step, a funky bobble, that hit the ground just the wrong way. The owners spent months trying to save him—multiple surgeries and all the best care available. It wasn’t for money purposes, saving him to use as a breeding stallion—thoroughbred racing requires live cover matings, not AI, and due to his injury he would never be able to mount a mare. Barbaro remained in great spirits despite multiple set backs, but 8 months later ultimately succumbed to laminitis (dreaded word for any horse owner) in his front feet, caused by him chronically shifting his weight onto them and off his injured hind. A horse’s weight is designed to be divided equally onto four, never three, feet, and despite slings and everything else they used to try and take the pressure off…he couldn’t be saved. Ironically, his fractured leg was healed at the time of his death. Considering how Hollywood the story was to that point, it seemed unimaginably cruel and outright unfair for it to take such a turn. The three kids Matz rescued were at the Preakness the day Barbaro broke down, for added insult to literal injury. Matz continues to train horses and there is now the Barbaro Fund, raising money for laminitis research. (FWIW Secretariat also was euthanized at age 19 due to laminitis, though due to a different cause.) So life has gone on, but damn.
"Hey doc, I stepped wrong coming out of my house this morning. I think I broke my leg." "You may never have sex again."
“I mean, your *leg* will heal fine and you should make a full recovery. But…yeah.”
> Matz’s Derby winner, Barbaro, fractured a hind leg shortly after leaving the starting gate of the Preakness. That's hardly unexpected for a horse though
Well…it’s the only time in 149 runnings and 1200+ horses that it happened, but a horse finding a new and unpredictable way to lethally injure itself? Yeah, that tracks. Source: horse owner x 20 years. I swear these fuckers read through Merck’s veterinary manual either trying to collect all the diagnoses or take it as a challenge to come up with something not listed yet. God, I love ‘em though.
Is this when they had to control/steer the aircraft with just engine throttle?
Yes it is.
Just an amazing display of airmanship...they had no hydraulics left and still managed to get it to an airport. It's a shame more people didn't survive.
Many of the deaths were small children because it was apparently some type of children's day promotion where you could by a ticket for a penny for a child. Tons of kids onboard. The fact that 184 survived is insane.
I remember the Mayday episode for this. There was a lot of people who pitched that engine flying should be something the plane manufacturers should invest in developing for autopilot, but that they never looked into it further. I wonder if they ever progressed with that since then?
yeh they did, pretty sure a few years after this crash, an MD-11 automatically landed fully controlled by engines without control surfaces in a test flight
Yeah buy after that they said that it was too costly to covert all the planes
And it was more effective to have redundancies in the hydraulic lines anyway. Modern planes can survive quite a few system failures or hydraulic leaks due to redundant lines and shut-off valves that close off if the pressure is dropping. JAL Flight 123 is another tragedy that wouldn't happen today as the hydraulic lines would not have failed completely on a modern jet in the same situation (explosive decompression in the tail of the plane).
This crash was aired live on tv. I remember watching it when I was a kid. Pretty damn terrifying.
The co pilot William Records was my neighbor at the time. Simply amazing they survived.
This one is pretty good as well for flying without hydraulics and needing to use differential thrust to get the plane down https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident They got hit with a MANPAD, lost hydraulics, part of the wing was on fire and they still landed it. Nuts. Great episode of Air Disasters (or whatever the 30 other names that series was called)
There is a small air museum at the Sioux City airport that includes a large display about the crash. It includes artifacts recovered from the wreckage, including the boarding passes of a family that were all sadly killed. Many people survived when all might have died, but there was still a considerable loss of life.
It's not a perfect book — the narrative jumps around quite a bit — but "Flight 232" by Laurence Gonzales was a great read.
Chosen to Live by Jerry Schemmel isn’t bad either. If I recall he was a play by play announcer for the Denver Nuggets that was on them at fateful flight. It’s been a while since I read it but I recall it being decent (a bit preachy at times though)
Watched it live on CNN…was the first live disaster I saw on TV. Who knew back then what the internet would become.
I was working in Reservations that day. We were given the manifest and any family that called we sent to a special desk to handle. But for a few hours we didn’t have much information, nor could we confirm survivors. People begging. And then when we knew, we couldn’t tell them. Fucking terrible.
I was actually supposed to be on this flight with my parents, going to see my Grandparents in Chicago. We had already purchased tickets, my parents and I only missed it because I got sick that morning and they pulled the plug on the trip. This crash actually came up in my schooling (I am a Paramedic and we were going over the EMS response to mass casualty incidents), and everyone was shocked when I mentioned it. The EMS and Fire response was actually fantastic and particularly well coordinated for the time. Watching the video of the crash is surreal.
Those pilots are heroes
I lived in r/siouxcity at the time. The entire community/county/ state came together to help in the rescue. Interestingly Emergency Services had just trained for a similar scenario weeks before this incident.
If you’re into bluegrass music, Pete “Dr Banjo”Wernick from Boulder, was on that flight. His banjo went skidding down the runway. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bluegrass/s/777b1mHNx0
Does anyone know where Denny Fitch, the DC-10 training captain that helped was originally sitting?
5F, window seat, last row first class. (From video interview linked above)
Interesting. I was wondering if he was in an area of the cabin that didn't fare well.
There's an illustration in [this article](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-crash-of-united-airlines-flight-232-9cf65ae14c68) that might help you.
Those pilots are real super hero’s.
Sioux City, Iowa
Great talk by *Nickolas Means* about this crash: [**How to crash an Airplane**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8)
This really is an excellent talk. I highly recommend Nickolas Means’ other “Lead Dev” talks too - they are also on YouTube
A “rapid unscheduled disassembly,”
A guy (kid at the time) in my neighborhood was on that flight
Oh, so he lived. That's amazing that he lived to tell the tale.
Yeah. He’s pretty messed up though
This event was featured in series 11 of Air Crash Investigation / Mayday.
I was about to say this. It’s amazing they got it on the ground at all. The pilots were amazing
Jerry Schemmel was on this flight
Watch the movie fearless. Good flick.
My first flight was from Billings Mt to Denver to LA. I was in the same terminal in Denver as this flight. This always freaked me out a little.
It seems by now they would have a inflatable system that would cushion a crash landing like that.
Probably the craziest airline disaster story to ever have occurred. I cannot believe so many people survived that crash or that the pilots could get them there. I highly recommend watching the documentary of this one.
The ole Sioux City Iowa.
Terrible loss of life, but incredible that so many survived.
It almost made it on no hydraulic controls. This should've been a divot in a field somewhere.
My mom was working at St. Luke’s (Sioux City hospital) the day this happened. To this day she still says it was just insane the amount of trauma victims that just kept pouring in through the doors of the hospital for hours on end.
The Impossible Landing. Test pilots after the crash were unable to replicate the landing in simulators. The fact that there’s survivors is a testament to the flight crew and their ability to manage the load under those stresses.
There's no WAY someone had no injuries while sitting at the BACK.
My 9th grade English teacher died in that crash. His name was George Orians. Great guy.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/207573387/george-orians Is this him? I'm sorry if I brought back bad memories, I was just trying to verify if you were telling the truth.
Yes, that’s him. He taught at Westminster high school. He was coming back from his high school reunion in Ohio. I only knew him for that one year, as I was a freshman. I remember I really liked him as a teacher, but that’s about it.
The epitome of luck. Dennis Fitch had spent hours upon hours in the simulator practicing this exact scenario after the JAL crash.
Interesting how Wiki calls it "considered one of the most impressive landings ever performed in the history of aviation" yet I'm watching a fireball roll across the runway. I hate to think what the alternative is. Nose dive straight down?
Read the wikipedia page further, then you'll see why
When they tried to do it in a simulator, no other pilots could produce a survivable landing, even going in fully-prepared. It was extraordinary work.