The aircraft's Captain explains how luck, communications, preparation, execution and co-operation helped a flight crew to deal with a major emergency in the air.
At 1516 hours on 19 July 1989, the author was Captain of United Flight 232, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10. While cruising at 37,000 feet, the aircraft suffered a catastrophic engine failure. The uncontained disintegration of the number two engine's fan rotor caused the loss of all three of the aircraft's redundant hydraulic flight control systems and made the aircraft almost uncontrollable.
Captain Haynes and his crew, augmented by a DC-10 instructor pilot who was aboard as a passenger, were able to navigate to the municipal airport at Sioux City, Iowa, U.S., where the aircraft was crash-landed approximately 45 minutes after the hydraulic failure. Of the 285 passengers and 11 crew members aboard, 174 passengers and 10 crew members survived.
That the aircraft was controlled at all and that there were any survivors in these unusual circumstances was recognised by the industry as an example of extraordinary airmanship by the crew. Among many other accolades, Captain Haynes and his crew were awarded the Flight Safety Foundation President's Special Commendation for Extraordinary Professionalism and Valour during the Foundation's 42nd International Air Safety Seminar in Athens, Greece, during November 1989, the first formal international recognition of their accomplishment.
Captain Haynes subsequently combined his reflections on what happened during the ordeal with extracts from a paper on the Sioux City area's response to the disaster by Michael T. Charles, Ph.D. The following is a description of what he considers to be the five primary factors involved in making it possible to cope with a major in-flight emergency such as the one-chance-in-a-billion loss of all flight controls.
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