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I was the Captain of the AA B727 which took off runway 32R immediately before AA191. I will never forget looking back as we turned left after departure and seeing the black mushroom cloud rising. My thanks to you for your emphasis on the crew's actions of following EXACTLY the procedure as published. No fault can be ascribed to the crew in this circumstance. Every seat on this aircraft was occupied, including cockpit jump seats, adding to the tragedy.
Dude you did not witness this tragedy. You are a worse liar then George Santos. An American Airlines DC-10 had 268 regular passenger seats in 1979 and 30 jump seats and seats in the cockpit. So the math you did was wrong. Not only that but you couldn't even be a Captain in 1979. You were not even born in 1979. Don't try to get sympathy for something you were not part of. It's even more hilarious that you state you were a American Airlines pilot. Do you know how many airlines were around in 1979, the odds of two planes taking off from the same airline at O'Hare are astronomical. Stop the lies.
Yeah my parents friend whose last name was Coulter was standby originally b/c the flight was overbooked, going into the three day Memorial weekend and people wanting to go home. He did get a seat on the flight. Pilots had no way of knowing what actually happened to the engine. The airline bears the responsibility including its maintenance division. At least they grounded the fleet of DC10s and were able to deal with other planes with cracks in the same area before tragedy happened.
Jim Dehart was a steward on this plane. In 67-68 we used to ditch school, Crawford High in San Diego, to go to lunch. Mostly A&W or Denny's. Few men in my life were as good and decent as Jim was. I'll never forget him.
Such a moving tribute. Thanks for sharing your personal memory -- it always helps to know who these people actually were and that they aren't just numbers in a report.
I distinctly remember a part of the episode of air crash investigations (or whatever it’s called) about this flight. A guy took his girlfriend to the airport, and back then you could go all the way to the gate without having a ticket etc. He decided to stay and watch her take off, and he was able to see the whole incident. I can’t even imagine what he felt in that 50 seconds. Heartbreaking.
I also remember from that episode about how the plane had a feature where they used CCTV so the passengers could enjoy the takeoff. I cannot imagine how horrifying it would be to watch your own final moments happening like that.
As soon as you mentioned the forklift I knew it was going to be the crux of the problem. I drove a forklift for years and they are most certainly NOT a tool of precision. Anyone who has used one for 10 minutes knows this. They are jerky, and you have very limited forward visibility due to the boom and sometimes the load. An overhead crane is a much better option especially since the men directly doing the work are in control of the movement.
I’m pretty sure I remember reading about this thing in Michael Crichton’s book _Airframe_ as “one of the two crashes that killed the DC10”, and by extension McDonnell Douglas as a manufacturer of public-facing aircraft.
@@paveladamek3502 how smoothly any given device can be operated is going to entirely depend on what the actual control mechanism is. It’s certainly *possible* to manufacture even forklifts that are buttery smooth and accurate. It’s just…. That’s not what they’re *for*.
@@JasperJanssen I remember some other problems with the DC planes where they had redundant hydraulic systems but they all shares one line which if damaged made the redundancy null and void. I recall reading lots of stories back in 70's and 80s about how crappy their planes were and people pointing to all sorts of things they did to lower costs.
The moment Petter suggested the shortcut, the first thing I thought was, 'oh my god I hope they don't use some kind of forklift, it's a stressed pylon!'.
My friend’s father was on that flight…he was 7 years old when this occurred. He’s now a captain at United Airlines. His dad is looking down proudly at him. 😢
There was another consequence as a result of this accident Mentour. Instead of training pilots to pitch to maintain V2 after an engine failure at V1, it was changed to maintain their current airspeed if the failure occurred above V2, up to a maximum of V2+20kts. The theory being if you are climbing steadily at that current speed then safer to hold it and fly rather than reduce airspeed to maintain V2, and potentially risk a stall situation if the engine failure has caused damage to the aircraft which has increased the stall speed on the wing, exactly as happened in AA 191.
Indeed weird how there wasn't extra safety margin built into that speed calculation to account for possible damage. After all we're not talking about speeds which might cause damage to extended flaps, landing gears etc. Mechanical parts have long had big safety margin requirements over what's thought as that normal absolute maximum/minimum. Like how those engine pylon mountings damaged by bad maintenance didn't become instantly critical at first flights after damage.
That occurred to me when watching the video. Not suggesting the pilots should have gone against their training. However when you find yourself in a situation like that a natural reaction would be not to change anything as long as it's flying "like this". In the case of this incident the pilots had very little time to try and troubleshoot anything :-( I believe in other situations pilots have resisted making changes as long as the aircraft seemed stable. When preparing to configure for landing they did some testing along the way to see what happens.... if we slow down, what happens if we give a little flaps, a little more flaps, what happens if we put the gear down, etc.
this should have been instinctive on the pilots part-to hell with what the book says, if you loose an engine you reduce power? hell no you add power to maintain speed with the working engine
The exact moment of this crash an American Airlines company party for new captains was taking place in Los Angeles. Dad flew for AA 1965-1995 and was attending as a new captain with my mom. During the party the announcement was made of the crash. The party went from celebration to tears and grief as many knew the flight crew. The top brass immediately headed out to Chicago as the party abruptly ended. I was a few days short of 15 and after walking home after school my older sister told me the news. Prior to making captain dad was in the top 1-2 seniority at LAX as first officer and flew the DC10 exclusively. He later retired as captain on the MD11 flying from SEA-NRT. This crash brought days of silence in our home as the reality of this loss impacted us all.
@@nofurtherwest3474 it's a road not taken ~ it's in my blood ~ my younger brother flies for Alaska ~ sadly toward the end of high school I became very unfocused and lacked direction ~ By the time I gained some real focus the window was gone ~ As a manager of people I have my dad's sense of care and responsibility for my team ~ 2 years after dad retired I asked him what he missed the most... he said 1 word: "responsibility." of course he didn't mind pushing those 3 throttles up for take off either :)
@@nofurtherwest3474 I graduated high school in 1982 ~ at that time pretty much the only path was military officer ~ my dad talked about Annapolis growing up but I didn’t have the grades for it ~ years later my brother went to Embry Riddle ~ airline hiring goes in waves ~ my dad was dropping out of college but the Navy really needed pilots in 1958 ~ in 82 the field was saturated ~ my dad got out of Navy in 65 and when he retired AA in 1995 he had just made top 100 out of 10,000 AA pilots ~ right place at the right time ~ now is a great time to pursue aviation as pilots are in demand again ~ my friends dad got hired at United and it was such a bad time he never made captain after years and years with them ~ I got kicked out at 18 and was just learning the live with a bunch of guys renting a house just trying to survive and make my way in the world ~ I’ve had a great life and solid career, but I do wonder what might have been ~ thanks for asking
I am a retired aircraft engineer...and at the time of this dreadful accident I was employed by CP Air in YVR. I was licensed on the DC 10 then...and I have to say that as we learned the full story of the forklift being used for this proceedure we were horrified at the sloppy proceedures that were carried out at that time by AA maintenance. We operated the wonderful DC 10 for many years accident free...and at no time would we as engineers have used this method to remove engine and pylon. A number of CP Air pilots did indeed enter the simulator and figgure out how to the DC 10 could have been kept in the air...( with the benefit of hindsight ) but the poor crew in Chicago had no knowledge that the engine had actually departed the wing...causing the retraction of the leading edge devices. I watch your channel a lot..and would like to say thank you for your most informative and well balanced videos. I also believe that titanium was used for that rear mount on the original pylon...and as a result the part was changed to stainless steel which was much more resistant to stress cracking.
As a fellow manufacturing engineer, it literally give me physical pain that they would conduct the maintenance in this way. I oversaw at least 200 leap 1b engines and there were times that I was pressured to “ship the engines or we’ll lose all this money” I flat out said, I will let the engine sit for a day, week, month, or hell, scrap out the whole thing if I am insure of anything I see during inspection. These aerospace companies must have this mindset. There is no room for greed or shortcuts when so many lives are in the balance.
Very interesting article and video. I was in the Marine Corps (stationed at NAS Glenview) and actually had a ticket to travel on that very flight from O'Hare to LA. Only because of a conflict with my schedule that day, was I spared. I changed my flight to standby on another flight later that day but didn't cancel my ticket right away. But I did get on to the later flight and then canceled my ticket on that flight. I was in the barracks packing, when my shop manager called me and asked if I had my TV turned on. I said "no" and he said turn it on now. What I saw was the news coverage of that terrible accident. I did not change my plans and went to O'Hare later in the day, going through crowds of reporters to get in line and proceeded to board another American Airlines flight to the west coast. It was a very uneventful flight, although the pilot was very quick to communicate any information about turbulence, etc. When we took off, we flew up and over the crash site. So much damage and debris on the ground. I will always remember that eventful day. It was a close call and I can only count my blessings that I was not a passenger on American Airlines Flight 191.
@Susan Treadway I, first of all, would like to thank you for your service to our nation. 🇺🇲 I am very glad that you missed this particular flight and that you are still here to share your story. Of course, my heart breaks for the 273 people who lost their lives that day and for their loved ones. 💔 That doesn't mean I cannot be grateful for those whose lives were spared because they had to make a change in their plans that kept them off the accident flights. There was the woman who decided to stay in Tenerife and not continue on KLM flight 4805. There was also the man who barely made it to the gate in Addis Ababa, who begged the gate agents to let him board, and they refused, even though the plane was still at the gate. Little did he know at the time, that by not letting him on the plane (which was initially frustrating for him), those gate agents saved his life, preventing him from being on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (the second Boeing Max crash). I am grateful for those who were spared from being on the fatal flights, while my heart & prayers go out to the victims of these flights and their loved ones. Again, I am grateful for your service to our country and that you are still here. Have a blessed day. 🙏🏻
I have watched many, many documentaries about this accident over the years, and, to your credit, I continue to learn new facts about it, thanks to your detailed and clear presentation. I had no idea how heart-breaking close the pilots came to preventing this tragedy. Thank you for your clear, concise, and detailed presentation, and please continue reviewing them to help us learn and grow as pilots.
Yes,more information here than I had ever seen about this incident ,I had heard however that a bit more speed would have maintained controlability of the aircraft and that the pilots had no way of knowing that the slats/flaps were not remaining as set,in fact,might not have known that the engine was GONE and not just inoperative think I heard though that "a little extra speed is your friend" from a 100 mile footrace runner who was also a pilot in the future with any aircraft with an unexpected incident would it be good to routinely try to keep airspeed towards the maximum safe for the config of the aircraft (like there is a max speed for gear down,flaps at such and such setting,slats deployed forward,and such wish the AA pilot/Captain David Drach were still around (don't think he was into his AA career yet when this incident occurred)
My grandmother was at O'Hare to board a flight to Tenerife that day. My dad dropped her off and was waiting with her before she was able to board the flight (as you were allowed to do in those days). This accident happened, and my dad asked my grandmother: "Are you sure you still want to get on the flight and go?!" to which my grandmother replied "*shrugs* What're the odds of it happening to another aircraft?". She boarded and had wonderful time in Tenerife.
@@RideAcrossTheRiverthose planes were also originally bound for Las Palmas, and neither went to Chicago first. But the airport on the north side was just dangerous in general
Absolutely correct! Safest form of transportation. More dangerous to cross the street in most cities. It's horrendous when plants go down purely because it's so rare.
What wasn't mentioned in the video is that the plane very narrowly missed the field of oil tanks where the airport's fuel supply was stored. Had the impact site been just a few feet further, it would've been a much more serious disaster potentially taking out an entire neighborhood of mobile homes in addition to the tanks. I was coming home from school and had just gotten off the school bus walking on the sidewalk towards my home when the accident occurred. We lived approximately 1 mile from the crash site. my mom was running a garage sale at our home that day and was completing a sale when we heard the explosion. We didn't see the impact, but we saw the resulting fireball arise immediately after impact over the homes in our line of sight. Everybody just stood still in shock as our immediate thought was the nearby shopping plaza had been blown up. A big plume of black smoke filled the sky for hours.
@@djanthaz Wrong. The plane blew apart after impact. Prior to impact it had only lost an engine and part of a wing tip. The airplane cartwheeled on impact. Literally one more second of flight time could've been enough to crash into the tanks and/or the mobile home park on either side of the impact zone as flight speed was ~200 mph which translates to a full football field per second. The tanks and mobile homes were less than a football field away from the impact zone. That area has been redeveloped over the years, but at the time of the crash it was very densely packed and a more perilous situation than what you see on google maps today.
Excellent presentation on the facts of this tragic accident. During certification of the DC10, McDonnell-Douglas convinced the FAA that the DC-10 could be safely flown with asymmetric slats. However, they did not consider a failure leading to slat asymmetry immediately following takeoff. Unlike the B747, L1011 and A300, wide body aircraft in service at the same time, the DC10 lacked a slat asymmetry brake system to prevent blowback of the slats in the event of hydraulic rupture or in the case of the other aircraft types slat drive train disconnection. The DC10 was a terribly designed aircraft with a record of 29 hull losses and over 1200 deaths.
@@djanthaz Homie did you watch the video AT ALL? You literally have a pic of it maybe 100ft off the ground about to slam into it, fully intact. Use your brain even a little next time you comment, Okay?
@@Anonymousaggro But on the other hand, redundancy can also be bad, as the crash in Sioux city has shown. In that one a turbine wheel in the rear engine exploded because of a crack, disabling all 3 hydraulic systems by cutting the lines and allowing the hydraulic oil to leak out.
@@mrxmry3264 (Disclaimer: Not my area of expertise) That sounds less like an issue caused by the redundancy, and more just like some incredibly bad luck. I don't think there being fewer hydraulic systems would have prevented that incident from happening.
@@Illdos Yes, the luck was bad but the real issue is that in the case of the DC-10 used for United flight 232 (Sioux City) the 3 redundant hydraulic systems were all grouped physically close together in the tail of the aircraft so that the shrapnel from the disintegration of the number 2 (tail mounted) engine was able to damage all 3 systems resulting in the loss of all hydraulic systems due to fluid loss. This close grouping of the 3 hydraulic systems is a fundamental problem designers have to cope with in the design of aircraft that have the horizontal & vertical stabilisers, rudder and elevator all in the tail. All hydraulic systems must run there in a confined space so there is by definition a loss of redundancy. In 1981 Eastern Airlines flight 935 (an L1011 aircraft) suffered an un-contained failure in number 2 (centre) engine which also took out 3 hydraulic systems by damaging the close together lines in the tail of the aircraft. Fortunately Lockheed had designed in FOUR redundant hydraulic systems so the pilots were able to control the aircraft and safely land it. That fourth system had been impacted by the shrapnel from the disintegrating engine but it had not been breached. The bottom line is that in aircraft design redundancy is good and more redundancy is better up to a point where it increases aircraft weight to the point where aircraft operation become un-economic. Clearly though, hydraulic lines that must run near engines that can suffer un-contained failures should have some extra protection in those areas. These accidents happened in the late '70s to the late '80s and we have learned from these lessons.
May 25, 1979 changed my life. That was a Friday, Memorial Day weekend. I worked for GE (GETSCO) in Schenectady in the International Department and flew all over the world. That day I had reservations that day to fly from Albany to O'Hare to LAX on AA191 to spend a week with my parents and brother. There was a very strange circumstance that made me tell the taxi driver that I changed my plans and wanted to go to our office instead of Albany Airport. One of the managers at the office talked me into taking a troublesome assignment in Venezuela. I accepted (he would double my vacation time after the job and GE would pay my plane ticket to LA and back). Later that evening I called my parents to say that I wasn't coming home. They had been crying and unable to speak. My brother finally blurted out that ''your plane crashed.'' I didn't know about it. It was a subject they never brought up while they were alive. Being 26 years old in a job that could put me anywhere on the planet with no notice at all, it didn't bother me a bit. ''Crashes happen to other people, not me''. The next day, Saturday the 26th, I boarded a DC-10 from JFK to Miami, another DC-10 from Miami to Caracas, then a DC-9 to Maracaibo without a care about aircraft safety in the world. In fact, the DC-9 was piloted by an ex Venezuelan fighter pilot who did some awesome tricks with that plane....the best commercial flight that I have ever been on, almost as good as my P-51 ride. Years later in 2002, I randomly met an AA Flight Attendant at a flea market that neither of us attended regularly. She became my girlfriend. AA191 came into very bright focus when I found out that her roommate and friend, Flight Attendant Nancy Sullivan, perished on AA191. Her name is at 22:43 right under Captain Lux. In the years that we were together, I met many other AA Flight Attendants and heard their stories about the crash. The topic came up often. Flight Crews are like high school classes. Everybody knows everybody, some get to be really close friends. As the years go by, I realize just how close I actually came to being on AA191. I had been stranded in all kinds of airports all around the world due to delays, mechanical problems, etc, and had stood in the standby lines at many ticket counters hoping my name would be called. When I would hear my name, it always felt like I won the Lotto. On the day that AA191 went down, I did not cancel my reservations because I was very busy. It now bothers me terribly that some poor soul was overjoyed to take my seat when I didn't show up. This really came in focus after meeting AA Flight attendants in the 2000's who knew Captain Lux and other Flight Crew. A friend in in the San Fernando Valley was at a party a few years ago where it was overheard that a guest's dad perished in the crash of 191 and that he had been a Standby passenger. That bothers me a lot. I'm thankful he chose to remain silent about my experience. AA191 affected my life. Toss a coin and I would have gone to the airport. Every May 25 is a solemn day for me. I stay alone, sit in the sun, appreciate life, and I read the names of all 271 passengers and the 2 guys who were killed on the ground going about their business. I always chose window seats in hundreds of flights and can imagine hearing and seeing everything that happened that day and can picture the ground coming up at me. I'll always remember AA191 and the huge number of families it affected.
@@etherealrose2139 I don't really give a shit what you believe. I go by what my life led me through. This is what happened to me and I wrote about it as accurately as I experienced it. More for my benefit than yours.
Thank you for breaking this tragedy down so thoroughly, Petter. Every accident with fatalities has a ripple effect. I went to work at one of the big multinational firms in Chicago a year later, and they were still mourning the loss of employees on that flight. They could see the smoke from the crash from their suburban headquarters that day, it was fierce.
My uncle was the head of maintenance for United at SFO during this era and he was always very proud of their safety record. He took the job as ensuring passenger safety rather than keeping the aircraft up for money. This video made me proud of United from back then (my aunt was a stew so I think he had a bit more riding on it literally haha).
@rafer Jefferson iii he has a lot in common with me My grandfather was responsible for the Hindenburg he was the one who came up with the idea of using volatile hydrogen gas with the static charged outer skin that held in the gas He was very proud up until the day of the crash/ explosion known as The Hindenburg Disaster It's nice to have family member that are So we'll remembered
United used an incorrect procedure for the engine removal on the DC-10 as well. AA we’re just the ones to have something back happen first. Engine was supposed to be removed from the pylon and then the pylon removed.
@@dthomas9230 The procedure was not approved, therefore it was not correct. No one can foresee all potential problems, that it is why it is very important to never deviate from approved procedures. It's a liability issue. If they performed the procedure as described by the manufacturer, the liability would be on the manufacturer. But since they used their own unapproved procedure, they needlessly took on the liability. No one knows if a problem would have developed with United's procedure because they quit the practice immediately after the crash. They do not remove engines with overhead cranes.
My father in law worked for AA for many years and was working this day. He was one of the first on scene, he said it was something he is still haunted by to this day. He said when he got there right after (within minutes) the accident he was staring at a show for a full min before realizing it was not only a shoe but a shoe with a foot still inside. My father in law is a very quiet man and doesn’t show a lot of emotion but seeing him talk about this was something I will never forget. The look on his face was very clear, he was back in the moment he first got there. He also was the one in charge of driving the board of directors (or whatever they call their executive office people) to the crash site from the AA terminal and while he was driving they were talking amongst each other like he wasn’t there. They were very cold and acted like the people on board were the ones who were going to cause them to loose money. He said he nearly broke the steering wheel as he heard them say “I hope the crash site isn’t too gory because the press are going to have a field day and the bloodier the pictures are the more money we are going to have to pay out to the families. With any luck the bodies will be burned beyond the point of being able to identify them as actual body parts” they had not even gotten to the crash site yet and they were talking about these poor people like they were nothing. They were basically blaming them for loosing money and now they would be the cause of them not being able to buy the summer home this year. It was the one and only time he ever spoke of it. He only said something because we were watching the news a news cast came on to discuss the 30 year anniversary. He was very clearly affected by it and still is to this day. But he’s a very stoic man and so I highly doubt he will ever discuss it again. I will never forget the look on his face when he talked about that day. He was newly married and and he had not yet started his family with my mother in law yet. That would come a few years later. He worked for AA for many years after that and I think it was because he was one person who cared about the passengers and he took pride in making sure they had a good flight but most importantly made it to their destination safely. He was very serious about the safety of passengers and crew and he also made sure to always take care of his guys because he never wanted them to loose focus and make a mistake that could get someone hurt or killed. He is an amazing man and I am proud of his years of service to the passengers and crew of Ohare. He retired before my husband and I met but I love hearing my husband talk about the stories of his dad working there. My FIN is pretty amazing.
@@guyhillock4860 thank you. He is definitely a unique man. He doesn’t show a lot of emotion but, that is because he grew up in a very tough home with a lot of abuse and he was the one who would step up and take the punishments because he was the biggest of his siblings. He may not always show it but he loves his kids (they call me the bonus daughter) and he is absolutely amazing with his grandkids. When I got married to my husband my father had already passed away and when I was trying to decide who I was going to ask to walk me down the isle instead it came down to my brother in law who has been a big brother to me for over 10 years and my soon to be father in law. My FIL told me to give the honor to my brother in law because he had been in my life longer and he deserved that more than he did. Instead he and my mother in law stepped in to pay for my wedding dress as a present to me. In their family the daughters parents purchase the brides dress as a gift to her but, my parents have since passed away so they surprised me by stepping in in their honor. They didn’t tell me this until after I had tried on a gown and chosen one. I’m very very lucky to have an incredible set of in laws. I absolutely love them, my dad only got to meet them once and my mom was already passed away for 6 years when I met my husband but I know they would have gotten along really well. Especially my dad and father in law.
@@ChouhouinNeko There's smth called "improvement" for pretty much eveything, not that you'd know about it, early. Maybe stop being so butthurt abt someone's opinion, grow up.
I work on coatungs for jet engines. While training (30 yrs ago), slight issue w the thickness of coating. Trainer said to me, "Just Dont fuckin fly", laughs and throws the 'sample' into the waterfall. (Spray booth collector).
Without excusing the airlines, I think the airplane designers also need to continue to improve the serviceability of the new airplanes to reduce the need for resorting to ad-hoc and Jerry-rigged procedures.
That's why we need independent oversight. I literally flinched when I heard "FAA had given oversight responsibilities to maintenance within the airlines". Sigh.
As an experienced forklift driver who's had to move with extreme precision on many jobs, I am shocked that this was even attempted. I wouldn't do this without an FPV camera set up on the forklift. Granted this was 1978 and real time camera feeds weren't really even possible yet, I can see why this wouldn't have been an option. That said, when dealing with fine movement, one person's "up a bit" is usually different to another person's idea of what "up a bit" is. A mirror jig should have been improvised to allow the forklift driver to view the distance themselves. As for the report stating that "no drift" was found on the forklift, that is simply not true. All forklift booms will "drift" if left in a loaded state, raised. The hydraulic pressures begin to decrease when the engine is shut off due to not being constantly topped up by the engine pressurisation. Despite popular belief, forklift drivers are HIGHLY trained and tested before entering work in an official capacity. This tragedy lies directly on the forklift driver's decision to perform the delicate work without being able to see it (I doubt anyone would think it acceptable for a brain surgeon to perform surgery without being able to see what he's cutting). Disappointing.
I would think you would need surgical level precision of movement to do it safely, but I doubt that was possible back in 78. It might be possible now, but as someone who likes to fly, I hope not.
the tragedy lies in the suits' and engineers' decision to deviate from the manufacturer's instructions. A procedure that relies on perfect forklift operation like this will eventually fail. The forklift operator was likely a mechanic and not a forklift specialist. If he refused, they'd find someone who wouldn't. Mechanics nowadays have some power to refuse BS like this, but back then probably not so much
@@Ryan-cy7zw Agreed! Often, we maintenance guys have to reckon with the suits. I can tell you from personal experience, I lost quite a bit in career progression and bonuses but stuck to my guns - always - for refusing to do what the suits wanted if in my judgement what they wanted me to do would diminish air safety. Back then (1970/1980s), we had NO protection whatsoever, though theoretically we can approach the DCA (FAA equivalent) direct.
Back in the 90's my dad would often fly in and out of town through O'Hare and as a treat my my mom would bring me along so I could watch the planes taxi in and out as we waited at the terminal with him. My parents fondly remember one time when I was 6 or so (and I was very into planes) I watched a huge plane taxi into the terminal. I recognized it and turned to my dad and said "You're getting a DC10 today? You're so lucky!" At that point, several people got up to go talk to the ticketing counter to change their flights. When I asked what was happening, my dad explained and told me about this accident. We mostly remember this as the time I cleared out half a flight for my Dad.
I had to laugh at this too, I told my wife about the DC-10 that lost hydraulic power and cartwheeled on the tarmac before news cameras in the 80's or 90's. She was born in the 90's, and was equally amused that there was a time where family could see you off at the gate without needing a ticket or passing through security!
I loved the DC-10! When I lived in Hawaii in the 1970s the only options we had to travel out of State was the 10, 707 or 747. I didn’t care for the narrow body 707 so it was always DC-10 or 747 for me.
@@niaj7400 Emotional responses have no place in accident investigation. If we treated crash sites like war graves we would have little way to avoid them happening again.
How terrible that fate hangs on details. The pilots were perfectly capable of flying the damaged airplane; the airplane was perfectly capable of flying. It was only the lack of two messages that should have been passed to the flight crew by the damaged airplane that ended the life of nearly 300 people.
Let's not forget, this would never had happened had the airline followed the correct process to maintain the aircraft. Passengers and flight crew paid the ultimate price for their decision.
Still a shame that the hydraulics didn't have a more redundant setup including protection valves and low pressure warnings,think those might have been added post accident,also surprising that there wasn't a safety crossfeed capability built into the electrical system supplying both sides' cockpit features.
I wonder if the Flight Crew ever realised that they were dealing with more than just an engine failure and they probably didnt even know about the damage to the wing or that the engine had completely detached and was lying on the runway . ATC noticed what had happened but there was very little time to tell the flight crew and they were too busy dealing with trying to keep the aircraft flying so they could return to the airport .
Excellent job of explaining the fine details of what led up to this tragedy. The father of a friend of mine was aboard this ill fated flight. I knew him. The last I heard of this accident was the plane had complete hydraulic failure after engine separation rendering it uncontrollable. Your explanation of the wing stalling, how the pilots had little indication of it happening and knowing their proximity to the ground brings it into complete focus. Unfortunately, as always, hind sight is 20/20. Thank you for hard work and dedication
Just came upon this video. Fantastic work! I was at the terminal that day, waiting at the gate for my flight. I saw the plane take off, then stand on its wingtip. It disappeared behind another building, and I did not see it crash, but did see the fireball. I think I yelled 'Holy S...', and remember people around me turning to look. There were gasps and outcries from other passengers. I was so numb, as were many passengers in the queue, that I don't remember much of my flight, only that it was delayed for two hours before we boarded. It took me years to rebalance my love of flying commercial with the horror of that moment. Unfortunately, this video is so good that it brought back flashes of that day..
I was on that DC10 on the previous flight before it crashed. Captain Lux was the same pilot. When we took off on that flight from Phoenix the plane shook violently and there was a hush of silence in the cabin. The flight was normal after that. I was on Mannheim Road when 191 crashed. It was surreal. At that time I did know I was on that previous flight until I read about it in the newspaper later.
I think the 911 is sort of the worst accident for airline history, probably due to incompetent pilots instead of terrorists attack, the terrorist attack is a fluke the government created to justify surveillance and invade their countries of choice.
This brings back the old adage, in an accident situation, speed and altitude are your best friends. you do not wan to be trading speed you want to get fast because control surfaces, wing lift, all like speed. many pilots i know in a situation like this would increase power to the other 2 engines, apply rudder, keep the plane as level as they could but shallow out the climb... keep bringing the speed up to and not touch the flaps or gear. While that sounds counter intuitive, they don't know the extent of the damage, if they are losing or going to lose hydraulic pressure... so moving the gear risks it being in an unsafe situation... and moving the flaps risks them not coming up or going down properly. once they are up around 240 knots and above 5000 feet, then begin trouble shooting including visual inspections. but again, part of that is hind sight based on several aircrashes like this.
@@jenniferstewarts4851 it's unfortunate that lessons like this have to come at such a substantial loss of life but I'm glad to hear pilots are much more knowledgeable today of these situations.
@@fumyea79 The problem is, many are not. many pilots, especially younger ones, don't know about older crashes, and many companies only teach standard "recoveries". Something as simple as turning on the APU when all engines fail seems logical, but for some companies its not even on the check list.
Thank you for clarifying exactly how the maintenance procedure went wrong. Previous programs that I’ve watched never really got the details of that correct. I have to say it really seems like they traded 200 man hours of work for 200 lives.
The mistake in the maintenance procedure was using a forklift. Reducing 200 man hours would normally be ill-advised, but it was considered a safety benefit since it involved less detachments of cables and wires.
I remember this vividly. The following year I was in the US Air Force, being sent to West Germany for a new duty assignment. I took some leave and went home to Wisconsin to see family, and then to the Chicago area to visit with more family. We had talked about this crash the day before I left for O'Hare to catch my flight. We took off from the same runway as AA191. I had a window seat, and the burned-out area was very visible. It was huge. It didn't scare me at all. But I remember feeling sad for a while. Even more sad is AA was trying a new perk for passengers. They had a camera mounted so the passengers could get a pilot's view of the takeoff. These people possibly watched throughout. AA stopped this after this disaster. Six years later when I was finished serving in the military, I settled in the Chicago area. I once drove over to the trailer park adjacent to the crash site and walked back there. I was amazed to find small pieces of debris still there. This after eight years.
A lot of people have mentioned the cameras and video but once that plane was tipping I doubt and people were hanging by their seatbelts I doubt anyone was looking at that don’t you think?
I gotta agree with both of you. The only reason I can get passed him snapping his lips every 30 seconds is because of how informative, thorough, educational, and his attention to detail in his videos, and it's truly every single one. I do enjoy a lot of other aviation videos and every single one I watch are all extremely detailed, but Mentour has an ability to take it to another level and that's a huge credit to him because these other channels are insanely detailed, so the fact he's able to be even more informative and remain interesting, it's like truly a talent. You learn more from his videos than you learn in flight school and that's not even an exaggeration lol
I don't know where he got (or made) those animations with the forklift and crane engine lifts, but it really helped to get into the grit of the story. Of course it's a BAD sign when that much is know and explained about the details of such work . . . that is where the devil lives ! B-)
I live near Chicagos O'Hare airport, I remember when this happened, it was a real tragedy. I recognize the picture that the person caught in the parking lot it was all over the news at that time.
I was a social science major, now a fiber artist/seamstress/stay at home mom, and I have mental health issues that occasionally turn me into a barely-sentinent couch dweller. Not only do I understand every single one of your videos, but you made me INTERESTED in something again. And it's aviation, of all things?! You have a gift, sir. Thank you for your incredibly well-made content and for sharing your phenomenal teaching style with everyone. So good.
There were changes that happened in the business world after this flight that may still stand today. I was a frequent flyer then and often flew with others in my department. We had a trip planned several days after the crash. I still have burned in memory the sight of looking down as we took off and seeing the crash remains. The business impact is that there were many people killed who worked for the same company. (Check news reports for details.) As a result many businesses established rules about the number of people who could travel together on the same flight. We would think about this flight every time we made travel arrangements.
One of the most iconic crashes ever, I used to wonder why it couldn't fly with the other 2 engines but even though I know the reason because I looked it up, I'm thrilled to watch your analysis and learn more about it
I love that you don't dumb these down. Don't know what a spherical bearing or clevis are? Look 'em up! :) Seriously---LOVE this series. You bring so much clarity and insight to these events. Also your animator needs a raise!
This is the aircraft that my first cousin had just deplaned from as it had just arrived at O'Hare. Needless to say she freaked out when she learned of the crash after her departure!
I was working breakfast in a coffee shop when a dear friend of my mother's came in. As I served her, she told me her brother-in-law had been killed in this crash. I wonder how many "degrees of separation" any of us have between ourselves and people who have died in terrible accidents. Thank you for a great piece, as always.
It's crazy how the quality of these gets better and better, the infographics really give us who aren't in the aviation industry a dearer understanding.
Excellent analysis! Here’s why I’ll watch every Mentour video: I’ve seen 3 or 4 programs on this accident. Here’s what is unique in Mentour’s work. 1. United used a crane to detach the pylon / engine assembly and didn’t have the same damage that American and Continental did in their fleets. 2. The damage reports on the maintenance procedure stopped at operator error. My blood ran cold when I heard that. If you’ve ever done any training on root cause analysis or six sigma you know that you never stop at human error. You always look further at the system that allowed the error to slip through. 3. The single point of failure on the stall warning, stick shaker, and slat indicators. 4. The comparison of V2 and the left wing stall speed. On every prior video, I always asked myself, “they could see the horizon. Why didn’t they bank right?” They tried. They never knew their left wing was stalled. It’s so awful.
@@darthkarl99 We must be talking about different knobs/systems. From the NTSB accident report: "The battery and static inverter operations can be obtained by rotating the emergency power switch on the pilot's overhead panel to the 'on' position." Look up a graphic for the overhead panel, and you will see EMER PWR almost right in the middle between the pilots. Its knob shape is somewhat different than other switches in vicinity, presumably to help with identification by feel in a suddenly dark cockpit.
@@marcmcreynolds2827 I'm going off the seconds from disaster documentary on the matter which stated that at the time the power switch to activate the batteries was behind a floor level panel underneath the flight engineers station.
@@darthkarl99 Interesting. I wonder if that panel in some way relates to "our" system, or the documentary people simply got bad information from someone. Pilots used as talking heads in those documentaries, for example, sometimes know what they are talking about and sometimes not*. Especially when it's an abmormal situation which goes beyond their training, the accuracy can get iffy ("If you reject the takeoff beyond V1, there's no way the aircraft is going to be able to stop on the runway"). * An additional, sort of humorous wrinkle on the talking-heads-in-documentaries genre comes from an engineer I happen to know who was a regular on one of those series ("Megastructures"? -- I forget). She's saying all these authoritative things about how difficult it was to cantilever that skyscraper's top floor or whatever, while in reality she hasn't even seen a picture of the building in question and is simply reading whatever words were handed to her (IIRC by her second season she at least had some input). So anyway, these shows tend to be at the mercy of whatever level of knowledge/ignorance the producers and writers bring to them.
They had an onboard video system. Not the same as the A380, but similar. It gave the passengers an outside view for the takeoff....I hope that the video feed went offline when the no.1 engine detached....but I dont know for sure.
Thank you for how you presented this case. You're the only one who showed that this was a survival incident. That makes this truly heartbreaking for me
Talking about simulators... I wonder what kind of technology they had back then and if they were good enough. Maybe a video about the history of flight simulators and their technology would be nice! 😄
During the late 1980s I was lucky enough to have a go in the Harrier simulator at RAF Wildenrath (Strangely they had a Harrier sim at a base that was equipped with Phantom FGR2, and the Harrier base had the Phantom sim). I'm not an expert but that simulator was absolutely incredible and capable of simulating any fault that the plane was capable of having). I would guess that the technology of simulators for civilian aircraft was of the same sort of quality and same sort of capabilities too. There is a possibility that it's the same manufacturer for civilian simulators as the military ones. They've improved a hell of a lot since the days of the 'Link Trainer'!
Computers were okay for the physics part, but 3D graphics were way beyond their capabilities (I think the first 3D graphics card was made in 1995 for SGi's Irix system). Once I tried a Tu-154 simulator from that era. and it used a camera over a model for the picture. It also had a control panel to introduce malfunctions into the system for training.
I just want to say that I was a 19, 20 year old kid at the time and I remember remember that crash so well. Even though the crash happened at O'Hare International Airport near Chicago, I could still see the smoke from that crash in Crystal Lake Illinois, which is about 30 miles Northwest of the crash site. I was deeply saddened and shocked by this event and I have never forgotten it.
I remember this accident and was greatly troubled by the loss of life. I was aware of the other accidents involving the DC-10. I refused to fly on the DC-10 from that time on. Through personal connections to the McDonnell Douglas company I learned of the dodgy forklift engine detachment cause. I appreciate your review of this accident. As is always the case you provide a thoughtful review and expert analysis. Thank you for all your efforts.
yes, the manufacturer needed a scape goat and it became the certificated airmen who actually do the job. insulate the corporation and the government. That's the number one priority in all of these mishaps. The crew chief actually committed suicide because the government, the company, and even the union convinced him it was his fault. A good friend of my father's was on that engine change crew. Hydraulic fuses (like Boeings have) would have prevented this crash. AA's Maintenance/Engineering applied to both Douglas and the FAA to modify its DC10s with these devices: Denied. Maintaining airspeed, rather than increasing pitch to reduce airspeed (procedurally) ... would have prevented this crash. There are only two laws which must be honored in aviation to aviate --- lift must be greater than weight and thrust must be greater than drag. All other procedures need to be evaluated for appropriateness.
One macabre detail you left out was the fact that this particular plane had a camera inside the cockpit, which was streaming to a display somewhere in the cabin so passengers could see what the plane was doing from the pilots' point of view. Assuming the loss of engine 1 didn't kill power to the camera, it's very likely that the passengers got a live stream of their impending demise as the plane went down. Quite horrifying.
@@J35_drakennn Yeah seriously! I wouldn't be surprised if this event was the reason airlines don't really do this anymore. God, imagine being in this situation and, to your horror, you look at the screen and notice that not only are you in a dire situation, you can actually watch everything unfold as it happens! Good god I can't imagine what that must've been like! I know the Airbus A380 has a camera on the tail that points forward that passengers can monitor from their seats, but I don't know of any others that do this.
those pilots were incompetent. you dont need a machine to tell you when you are stalling, and if you lose an engine then obviously you need more thrust and keep the nose further down
I was a ten year old living about 15 miles from the scene. I remember being on the playground at my school and seeing the plume of smoke rise. My Grandmother, who lived near O’Hare, was a nurse at a nearby hospital, I don’t know which one for sure. They set up an emergency mass casualty ward for the wounded who never arrived.
This is the most lucid and informative account of this accident I have seen. I was in AA ops there that morning and saw what turned out to be that DC-10 taxi out. A while later, the entire ops area, which was always noisy with crew member conversations, went silent as word was passed down. When the story broke on the TV news a bit later, we found out how bad it was. The airport did not shut down, though, or at least not for long, because our crew flew out a few hours later.
I've been waiting for the right video of yours to mention my story. I once operated a forklift that required very tight precision. We had minimal room to operate. We were picking up large metal totes of fruit and liquid. You COULD NOT spill anything. You then had to place a tote (about 3k lbs US) on a conveyor belt. As soon as you placed it, an eye sensor would trigger and you had about 8 seconds to place and back out. If you didn't do this correctly, the belt would break and the production line would shut down for around 2 hours. It was VERY stressful. Now, imagine that you're doing 100 times more operations and YOUR life and MANY OTHER LIVES are on the line! THAT'S STRESSFUL! My hat is more than tipped to airline pilots who do this hundreds of times in their careers! Well done people!
Excellent video. I was stuck in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway at Cumberland not far from where flight 191 went down. I saw the fireball and the smoke. I thought that fuel tanks off of Touhy Avenue had blown up. I immediately turned on news radio, and they said there were unconfirmed reports of a plane crash at at O’Hare. My heart just sank realizing I had just witnessed the death of all these people. I still think about it every memorial day weekend.
I remember this well. My dad drove us to O'Hare to view what could be seen of the wreckage. I was 14 at the time and it was very disturbing. However it never dampened my urge to fly on vacations.
I think there must have been maintenance personnel at the time who had severe misgivings about using a fork truck to align that mount. With the weight of the engine, the dicey balance, and the sloppy accuracy of fork truck hydraulics it seems like damage would be nearly assured.
Agreed. No way it would happen today. That's backyard shonky style maintenance really. So many complexities not even considered in the procedure. It's a shame people had to pay with their lives for it...
@@gregorylubbers8533 what really gets me here is the other way of solving it. They just took a crane. Like wtf, that's the first thing I would think of if I had to lift something up. It's not even difficult to do, they didn't need some super special equipment...
@@chrissim4386 you can be sure the crane option was more expensive. Why do that when you can just get Jimmy to hop in the forklift you use in the warehouse. Enraging.
Needed a bigger forklift... And a cradle with built in hydraulic jacks for adjusting alignment. Then they could apprach from forward instead of the side, and do the fine adjustments from where the workers could observe needed movement.
The pilots could only act based on the information they had, and the information they had was limited due to the electrical damage caused by the engine detachment. I initially learned about this on Fascinating Horror's channel, but hearing the breakdown from a pilot gives even more information. That picture and the one of the explosion afterwards is just chilling.
I know this is off topic and may come off as rude or offensive but are you a 9/11 conspiracy person/Truther (aka, Conspiracytard)? Again I’m not trying to be rude. Just curious.
3 месяца назад+4
May 25,1979, Memorial Day weekend, my plane was behind this one. When we took off we flew thru the smoke. I was 19 years old flying home from AF tech school at Chanute afb. I was on a DC-10 also. I didn’t find out what happened until I got home. My plane was going to Houston, flt 191 was going to LA. Years later I got to go to the memorial near a little lake, I sat down read the names, and I cried.
A local man in my town Stephen Greene was on this flight We used to ride dirt bikes down in the sand pit adjacent to his book press I didn’t know him well though He was one of only a handful of people who couldn’t be identified in this crash
All these years later i still get a sick feeling. A very well liked father whose passion was NHRA Drag racing lost his 18 yr old Daughter, who had travelled that route a dozen times. 50 seconds of pure hell.
This plane crashed into a closed airport named Ravenswood. My father was a flight instructor at Ravenswood before it closed. I spent many Saturdays and Sundays at Ravenswood with my father. Although the airport was closed for years, a hanger still existed at the time of the crash where a few people worked selling new and used aircraft parts. The DC-10 crashed into the hanger, killing those employees too. I happened to be driving westbound on the tollway that was about 3/4 of a mile north of O’Hare’s northern boundary and was the north boundary of Ravenswood airport, the crash site, at the time of the crash. The DC-10 crashed south of the tollway and was behind me. I saw the billowing smoke and fire. The pilots had only seconds to react to losing, literally, their left engine. The local radio station first reported the airplane as a freighter. Within half an hour they reported that it was in fact a American Airlines DC-10 passenger flight, bound for LAX and all aboard were feared killed. So very sad for everyone.
I struggle to imagine going to work in a ground based role that's not at an airport and getting killed by a downed plane. Kudos to the pilots, who were doing everything right, given the information that they had. Thoughts to the families and collegues of those killed.
Interesting trivia regarding Flight 191. Lindsay Wagner, the actress that played Jaime Sommers in the Bionic Woman for two years (1976-1978) was scheduled to be on this flight but suddenly felt very ill while waiting for the plane. She skipped the flight.
A lot of people will say that premonition isn't real, but I bet a lot of the passengers of that flight felt something wasn't right. I've learned that it's usually a good idea to follow your "gut instinct". Doing so is probably the only reason I'm still alive today. I've had a lot of close calls with death in my life.
Lol that's nonsense. People who die young, wake up not expecting to die. They just do. No gut instincts. Just not some people's time. @@NotSoCrazyNinja
I remember when this happened in Chicago in '79. I still have the Time magazine covering the story. They kept showing the photos that caught the aircraft in its climb right after takeoff but it rolled dramatically to the left nearly inverted on its side. You could clearly see the engine missing from the wing. Very incredible photos. All we kept hearing was DC-10 this and DC-10 that....
I've seen documentaries on this disaster but what I like about this channel is the mechanical details that you go into and how I leave the video with a much fuller idea of how these things actually happen.
I was in the Air Force when this accident happened in 1979. Excellent explanation of what happened. I read the NTSB report and have always felt bad about this incident. The picture of the plane at a over 90° bank is actually terrifying but thank you for making it so, easy to understand what actually happened. I love your channel in your videos. Thanks keep them coming!
I flew to London and Copenhagen a couple of months after this accident. I remember people applauding when landing because they were happy to have survived the flight. I think this started a "tradition" of some people applauding on landing that persists today (2024).
I worked with one of the mechanics who did that engine change. We never talked about it. Also, the AA Hangar Bay 2 was used as a morgue. Years later, you could smell the death coming out of the floor drains. Some people have claimed they could see people wandering about that hangar bay only to disappear. Call me skeptical on that one. The deaths of people on the ground was fortunately low. There was (and still is) a trailer park only a few hundred feet from the crash site. I was a teenager when this happened, and I saw the smoke from the crash from 10 miles away. As an airline mechanic, I've never forgotten it.
My father was 17 and he was traveling east on IL-72 near West Dundee and could see the smoke in the distance. As a kid anytime we were traveling into the city on I-90 he would point over to the mobile home park and the storage tanks and talk about the accident.
I worked with someone who’s brother was part of that maintenance crew. Not sure if he was a mechanic or engineer, but seeing this video on what he told me years ago makes a lot of sense, especially regarding the forklift.
What a tragic accident, and to think of this same plane flying back and forth for a while with this tragedy waiting to happen. Also terrifying to think of those other 6 planes that had similar problems, and that could have also ended badly. The thoroughness of the investigations post-incidents are truly remarkable !
Actually if a engine failure takes place were there's a sudden stop or vibration of the engine, they are designed to rip off and tumble over the wing. However they rip off at the pylon attachment point were there are safety valves to close the hydraulic lines to prevent lose of fluid. A coworker of mine was flying as a flight mechanic on a Kalitta Cargo 747 out of Detroit. The crew summon him up to the flight deck and asked him to check the #3 engine because they lost all indication. He came back to report he knew what the problem was, the engine was gone. Later they found it in lake Michigan. They Landed without incident.
@@np1000 That really highlights the importance of using the correct engine maintenance procedure to ensure the pylon remains the failure point instead of its attachment to the wing.
Two managers that I worked with in 1979 were on that flight - one had 7 children, the other had 9 children. At the time, we never really heard how the accident occured. This analysis answers a lot of questions. Very complete.
For personal reasons I have read/watched everything that I can find about this accident since the day that it happened. After it became available online, I read the NTSB report of the accident annually on the day. This may be the best (worst) example of your Swiss cheese model. So many things had to lineup to go wrong in just the right way. Your Captain’s explanation of what the crew was experiencing and the statement that they did everything they could be expected to do was meaningful and calming. Thank you.
Mentour Pilot….. I’ve watched a lot of RUclips videos on aviation. I am a medically retired airline captain, check airman and FAA gold seal flight instructor. I literally started flying at age 4 when my dad had a super cub and rented a Piper Turbo Arrow for family flights. I don’t recall many days of my life where flying wasn’t a part of my daily life in one way or another. I just want to say your video are some of the absolute best I’ve experienced in my life. Your videos are absolutely relevant and informative to professional pilots while also being of great informative content to people who are just curious or love aviation. I imagine making these videos has taught you so much and indeed made you a better pilot. I learned more as a non flying check pilot, a check airman, a ground school instructor and as a flight instructor than I ever could have done just studying as a student in class. Thank you for making these. I cant help but believe your videos are making professional pilots better by helping them to think “what if” I were to find myself in the same situation.
I was nine years old and we lived in Chicago when this happened. This is one the worst memories from my childhood. Our family took this trip from ORD to LAX at least once a year to visit with relatives. I loved Aviation as a young child and that has never wavered, even after this horrible event. My parents knew about my love of planes and I had many models and books. We often flew on 747's, 727's and DC-10's. The DC-10 was my favorite because of that beautiful three engine design. I think my Father knew something because looking back and talking to family after this tragedy I know we hadn't flown on the DC-10 for a couple years previous to that day. I remember that day clearly. We only had half a day of school because of the holiday(Memorial Day). I was outside playing with friends. We didn't live close to ORD, we were near the lake, anyway. Mom called me in and we watched the news together. Devastated, shocked, upset, confused. Those were the emotions of a nine year old who loved airplanes and just witnessed the worst crash...ever. That photo...that photo still haunts me although I am completely still flying . I now live near the airport with a perfect view of almost all the flights arriving on most of the newly configured runways. I live just minutes from the site of 191. I go often. I have friends who had family that were going to be on that flight but ere not for various reasons. Petter, I have seen and read just about everything there is on this fateful flight but nothing compares to your knowledge, understanding and depth at relating this to us. I don't know why I didn't see your story when you posted it. Also Petter, quick question. When we usually traveled to LA from Chicago it would be in the dead of winter. Christmas break or January. Would the added cold have exacerbated these cracks, fractures maybe making it more revealing to the Engineers? I did not research the alloys that were used. Some are prone to fatigue with temp differences and others become brittle when constantly cold. Thank you so much for your channel! Keep up the the great work.
I've always been under the impression that the detachment of the engine severed the connection to ALL systems of the aircraft, leaving it completely uncontrollable. I never would have thought that the flight crew would have been able to recover, if only they had sufficient information about the predicament they were in.
You might have been thinking of United Airlines Flight 232 that crashed ten years later in Sioux City, Iowa. Flight 232 lost all hydraulic power. From the final report for American Airlines Flight 191, it looks to me like they are confidant it still had at least one of the three hydraulic systems operating. And that it might have had all three. It was estimated that at the maximum fluid loss rate, the hydraulic system would have operated for 4 minutes before running dry. Much longer than the 30 to 40 seconds between the engine separation and the crash.
@@andrewsnow7386 I doubt they could ever have had all three systems still operating, since one of them was driven by the departed left engine, surely. Might have had two, one certainly hopes they would have had at least one (surely McD wouldn't have grouped all three systems closely together in the leading edge, as well as the tail...)
@@cr10001 You are right, the No 1 hydraulic system was not operating. With the engine torn off, it did lose all it's hydraulic fluid. When I read the hydraulic section of the report, the 4 min. was the minimum time the No. 3 hydraulic system would have operated. I misread it and thought it was talking about the No.1 system. Note that there are backup pumps that can supply hydraulic power in a system when it's engine is down. Anyway, after a more careful reading of the report, I found: "Since two of the three hydraulic systems were operative, the Safety Board concludes that, except for the No.2 and No. 4 spoiler panels on both wings which were powered by the No. 1 hydraulic systems, all flight controls were operating."
@@andrewsnow7386 My interpretation is that the 3 "redundant" hydraulic systems on that airplane were not really "redundant",at least not unless some special gymhanka were performed by the flight crew who probably had no indication that anything was wrong with the hydraulics
When this happened, I was 12 years old and lived several miles from Ohare. I remember sitting on my porch and seeing the huge black smoke clouds trailing into the air after the crash. Every time I fly out from Ohare, on takeoff I think about that tragedy. I now live just a few miles from Ohare, just under the newly completed runway path and I’m constantly reminded of it when I see a big jet banking hard after taking off. It’s crazy how that haunts me to this day.
Thomas H, I was in 8th grade at school in Villa Park Il. In Gym class. We were outside and we could see the huge black smoke cloud. When I got home my mom had the news on and I saw the horrific sight on TV.
I lived about the same distance away and at age 10. I was also able to see the plume of smoke. I also remember my parents watching the wall to wall coverage on local tv.
I was 11. I lived on the Northwest side. Portage Park area. I remember this so vividly. As kids, our parents would take us down Irving Park Rd. to park and watch planes take off. That was what we did for fun in the 70's!
I remember this so very well. I was fly back home from college. I had a layover in O’Hare Airport. My plane landed just after O’Hare reopened after this crash. I was able to see the crash site and the utter devastation. Latter I went to law school in Tulsa. One of my classmates had been an A&P mechanic at the AA maintenance plant and had work on the pylon and engine removal on many of AA’s DC 10s, including the one that crashed in Chicago. Had also has written several memos outlining the dangers of using the forklift method of engine removal. Copies of his memos ultimately ended up in the hands of the FAA and NTSB. It seems that AA failed to produce them for the FAA and the NTSB. You did an excellent job describing the crash and how it occurred.
After all of those hours of flying with the damaged mount if it had only waited another five minutes to fail when the leading edge slats were retracted this flight would have been recoverable.
@@PhilMoskowitz Exactly AAron, so many innocent lives on the ground were lost in San Diego, nobody expects a plane to come raining down on their neighborhood due to some stupid single engine cessna flying into a jet liner. THat is far more tragic, as the loss of life on the ground equals that of those on the plane and the fact that the San Diego accident was totally avoidable, literally as the radar does not lie.. here in this case, the DC10 you have maintenance and human error involved.. and had the pilots gone to full power, they could have easily have landed that plane wihtout incidence.. it just does not make sense to me, if you lose an engine and have 2 more at your disposal, wouldn't your instinct tell you to "Floor it" Goto full power, you need that power, that lift, that airspeed.. why not go to full throttle, that would have saved the plane, the crew and everyone's life.. Why would the ATC not recommend them to go full power, come around and land??
I've sat in the cockpit of a Bangladesh Biman DC-10 because I knew the Captain. Watching the sunrise over the Himalayas - which was on the horizon - was a sight to see.
I will never forget waking up as a child, seeing that famous chilling photo of the aircraft with wing almost at right angles to the ground, in the morning papers. Decades later , I watched the Smithsonian Channel documentary on this accident. As always , you have provided a few more details; in this case, the nitty gritty of what went wrong with the "time-saving" maintenance procedure. After watching the TV documentary and this one, I was filled with further sadness for all who perished. The pilots did everything by the book, and yet it was ironically not appropriate for the circumstances. Truly and sadly, the Swiss Cheese model, fate, call it what you will, had it in for them.
It was the airlines attempt to cut costs with a not approved maintenance procedure which killed them. Simply. The pilots had no chance. An old air industry wisdom is: If you think safety is expensive - try a crash. RIP to the victims.
@@Rammstein0963. I was going to EmbryRiddle Aeronautical university in Prescott Arizona at the time. The Captain’s son was a good friend of mine. He was on his way home to Phoenix when he found out that his dad was flying AA191. He did not return to school after that while I was still there. His father and the crew followed the correct emergency procedure for an engine failure. They did pitch up to V2 airspeed as trained. But not knowing that the left slat had retracted because of the loss of hydraulics , that was too slow a speed for the left wing and it stalled creating the roll. They never had a chance unfortunately. RIP Captain Lux and to all of those aboard. 😔
Captain Walter Lux. A Flight Attendant I met in 2001 knew him and said that when they would get in the briefing room and Captain Lux was the assigned pilot, they were happy. Some pilots had a rather nasty reputation but Captain Lux was regarded as a top highly experienced professional.
I was in Chicago on that day, and had considered taking that flight on my return leg to San Francisco, via Los Angeles. I scheduled a later flight so that I could visit the Museum of Industry, on related business. On leaving the museum my cab driver said that traffic at the airport might be disrupted because of a plane crash. The flight home was unusual, with free drinks and a reduced cabin crew. The camera that allowed the passengers to observe the takeoff was turned off. This was probably done to keep us from seeing the wreakage. The flight was also an American Airlines DC10. This was my 2nd near miss; the first was in 1972 when a helicopter that was to pick me up for a training exercise crashed before it reached our pickup location. Food for thought.
I remember when this happened. I was a boy and could not sleep because the next day I was leaving on a long trip to Disneyland. I turned on the T.V and the crash was on the news it was 3.00 A.M and the least of names was rolling across the screen seemed to go on forever. Never forgot this
At the time, I was a student in Wisconsin and was scheduled to fly to Europe out of O'Hare a week later. When I heard the news, I felt like I had taken a punch to the gut. I thought about all the passengers screaming as that DC 10 went down. Everyone I knew was shocked. You are right it was a terrible accident. To this day, I am still angry with AA for using a forklift to dismount a jet engine.
My god. The all must have been screaming so much. Once the plane was close to 90 degrees they had to know it was over. By the time they realized there’s no way they are going to survive who would have been over just seconds later. The only consolation is that it doesn’t seem as though there was any physical suffering.
I feel like a fool but as someone with an amateur understanding of flight, I always assumed that a plane was completely screwed following an engine detachment, primarily because of this very incident. I had no idea that a detachment is a recoverable scenario. I learned something new today so cheers!
Yup.. TransAir 671 had 2 engines completely detach and landed safely. Engine #3 broke off the aircraft due to a growing fatigue crack, as #3 was ripped off the wing, it impacted and took the #4 engine off with it. Miraculously landed. Very skilled pilots
@jshowa o Well actually if you paid attention to the video, then you would know that indeed, American 191 could have been recovered. The pilots just had no idea the aircraft was stalling.
I flew to and from Chicago on a DC10 Summer of 1987 on AA and the return flight was delayed due to a hydraulics issue. We were still a bit scared as it was at night and the crew anticipated a hard landing. No problems upon landing but the plane seemed to take longer to stop to proceed off the runway. I also flew on a DC-10 from JFK to Bermuda (also AA) in 1988. No problems but we were not seasoned fliers at that time and felt a bit worried. Now decades later I criss cross the Atlantic often, except for 2020-2021. Over the years in Economy and Business class on B757's, B767's, B777-200, A330.
Hight Lift Designer - Great assessment but want to mention that this crash and subsequent analysis led to the addition of slat skew detection systems. The detachment of the engine led to air being spoiled over the wing and loss of lift in that area. The roll was not so much due to the stall speed but lack of roll authority to compensate for the loss of lift, asymmetric lift left to right. The stall speed was a factor but the aircraft could not recover from the combination of slat retraction and spoiled lift. The tools to study the loss of lift became more advanced in the coming years. 777 and 737NG added slat skew. Slat skew spoils the lift as one part of the slat raise above the wing and spoils the lift. The system must detect and shut down before the tip gets too high. The spoiled area spreads out in a triangle-shaped wedge front to aft.
Good video. Maybe I missed it in the video, but there were 2 other changes made in response to this accident. 1. The DC-10 slat actuators were redesigned to use mechanical locks rather than hydraulic pressure to keep the slats extended, and 2. American's pilot's engine out procedure was changed for them to climb out at V2 plus ten (or a higher speed if they were already at that higher speed). At least that's what I recall, and I could be wrong. That was a long time ago.
There was another consequence of this accident: The Speed Command Computer of the DC-10 was modified - the reason was this: If the pilots of the accident flight would not have reduced their "too high speed" - the attained speed of 172 knots, down to the commanded V2 speed, the the left wing with the retracted slats would not have stalled and the aircraft would not have crashed. The pilots would have the chance to climb out and to check the situation (the third pilot/flight engineer going to the 1st-class passenger cabin having a look at the wing and reporting that the slats are retracted). Having a chance to perform a "no-slats landing". The normal take-off procedure of the DC.10 was climbing out on V2+10kts (all engines operating) and climbing out at V2 (one engine out). After this accident there was a bulletin to modify the Speed Command Computer (AT/SC Computer) so that the command to the flight director pitch bar on an engine fail situation was to keep V2+10 kts in case the speed attained was already V2+10 kts or higher. In the case of the accident climb-out V2 was 153 kts, V2+10 would have been 163 kts, this would have been above the stall speed of the left wing with its retracted slats. As another consequence of this accident there was also a modification to the DC-10 Slat mechanism: On loss of hydraulic pressure the slats were locked in position (extended if the loss of hydraulic pressure occured when the slats were in an extended position). From this state of mechanical locking it was only possible to move the slats when the hydraulic pressure could be restored. One other remark: The FAA has grounded the DC-10 much longer than only to the time when it was discovered that the accident was caused by a maintenance issue rather than a design flaw. (Foul play by Boeing influence towards FAA was suspected to be the cause of that too long grounding.)
Great Info, I wonder though, after what happened at Sioux City, would they have bled out their hydraulics in another minute or two anyway. With asymmetric thrust, they might have been doomed regardless.
@@nsammons5292 You can not add the Sioux City accident into this case. Here in the case of the detached engine the hydraulic system number 1 was loosing its fluid. The systems numer 2 and number 3 were not loosing any fluid. In the Sioux City case all three hydraulic systems were severed and loosing the fluid. In the case here the airraft would be fully contollable with the asymmetric thrust having full contol through the rudder with systems #2 and #3
@@davidpowell3347 In the DC-10 the Take-off phase of flight in not done by autopilot. The speed control computers (AT/SC) command via the Flight-Director pitch bars that the pilot flies a pitch attitude that results in a speed of V2+10kts in a normal climb-out and V2 in an engine-out situation.
What a heartbreaking tragedy, I feel so much for the terror those on board must have felt, and for their loved ones. No detail is too small to be checked over and over, remember the O-ring failure that brought down the Space Shuttle?
A couple engineers voiced concerns about the o ring at a meeting the night before but the corporate culture at NASA was so toxic. And as it turned out they weren't wrong to be concerned. Just that they were so sure the shuttle would blow up on the launch pad but it lasted longer and might have made it except for a gust of very strong wind that hit the shuttle and dislodged a piece of material that temporarily sealed the flame coming out.
It's crazy that they felt a forklift would be exact enough for this type of job. I've never worked on planes, but I drove a fork lift in my youth. They have a lot of play in them. The forks themselves are solid, but the hydraulics are extremely difficult to adjust by just fractions of an inch. Most don't have lateral movement either, meaning you have to drive it in perfect position left to right, front to back, & the only thing you control with the hydraulics is the height, which usually doesn't lift plumb.
Back in the 1980s I met an old WWII pilot who had been taxiing to take off just as this happened. A friend of his, another WWII vet, turned his plane around and taxied back to the terminal and resigned. He said "I've been flying airplanes for 40 years. If an engine can just fall off an airplane then I'm done."
I was a aviation mechanic at AA for 35 years. I removed and installed many pylons and engines on the DC10, many years after this accident. The problem was they were preloading the aft clevis with the install. Many ac at AA and other carriers were found with aft clevis stress cracks after the accident. We removed and installed these items every ac at their heavy C check at the time. Still when installing the pylon it was critical to not preload the aft clevis using a scale to prevent you from picking up more weight than the weight of the pylon with the crane.
Minor point I know but thanks for mentioning the flight engineer. The two documentaries I saw on this neglected him entirely - Air Crash Investigation and Seconds from Disaster, with the latter not even bothering to use a DC-10 simulator or anything similar. Instead, they used a Boeing 737 simulator
I was working nearby O'Hare at the time of this event, and followed the news everyday. Many in our office stopped work, and watched from our building at the smoke, and emergency equipment racing to the crash site. The Chicago Tribune reported daily news of the NTSB findings. The chief of maint. who authorized the step saving procedure was due to testify 31 days after the accident. The day before his testimony he took his own life.
I remember this accident. It was broadly covered in the news at the time. I've followed the story over the years and I have to say your video covers many, many aspects I had not seen before. Thank you.
I have flown on the DC10 for many years without any knowledge of crashes. From the DC 10, I flew from age 4 to 15 years of age visiting my mom in California back to my father in New York Rochester, and I've always enjoyed flying on that very large roomy Craft. I always thought it was a beautiful jet with a rear wing engine. I was always escorted by an American Airlines Stewardess from one flight to THE next in Chicago and I was always the first 1 on the plane. They would let me go into the cockpit. And look around and say hello to the pilots. They would give me my wings to clip onto my shirt. And made me feel really welcomed. It was such an awesome crew. My experience was good. Unfortunately, unfortunately, not for many others.
God, I remember this dreadful, sorrowful day while growing up in Chicago... May 25, 1979 is 'a day that will live in infamy' for many of us who experienced the feelings of shock, sorrow and anger while watching news reports of this crash in real time back then. Thank you for your fine video about this accident.
My dad worked as ground crew at the time. He wasn't there that day but one of his co-workers was, and remembered seeing the engine just "bounce" down the runway as the airplane took off. I'm glad I learned the details as to what happened afterward, I thought the detachment damage was so great that it knocked out enough systems to make the airplane uncontrollable.
I was a flight attendant for North West Orient airlines for 7 years. I remembered this accident as I always flew on the DC 10. I loved that airplane. The FAA grounded all DC10s. From that time forward the DC10 was known as the " Death Cruiser". Still I loved flying on it when it came back into service until it was retired from North West airlines.
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@@rnsteve2265 tomorrow!
@@MentourPilot 👍
Hello mentour pilot I am fan
Just recently subscribed. I am not a pilot but find your videos very informative and extremely interesting. Thank you!
I was the Captain of the AA B727 which took off runway 32R immediately before AA191. I will never forget looking back as we turned left after departure and seeing the black mushroom cloud rising. My thanks to you for your emphasis on the crew's actions of following EXACTLY the procedure as published. No fault can be ascribed to the crew in this circumstance. Every seat on this aircraft was occupied, including cockpit jump seats, adding to the tragedy.
That had to be terrible for you!
Dude you did not witness this tragedy. You are a worse liar then George Santos. An American Airlines DC-10 had 268 regular passenger seats in 1979 and 30 jump seats and seats in the cockpit. So the math you did was wrong. Not only that but you couldn't even be a Captain in 1979. You were not even born in 1979. Don't try to get sympathy for something you were not part of.
It's even more hilarious that you state you were a American Airlines pilot. Do you know how many airlines were around in 1979, the odds of two planes taking off from the same airline at O'Hare are astronomical. Stop the lies.
Yeah my parents friend whose last name was Coulter was standby originally b/c the flight was overbooked, going into the three day Memorial weekend and people wanting to go home. He did get a seat on the flight. Pilots had no way of knowing what actually happened to the engine. The airline bears the responsibility including its maintenance division. At least they grounded the fleet of DC10s and were able to deal with other planes with cracks in the same area before tragedy happened.
Your a pilot too🤙
Certainly, a sight I'm sure you'll never forget!😕
Jim Dehart was a steward on this plane. In 67-68 we used to ditch school, Crawford High in San Diego, to go to lunch. Mostly A&W or Denny's. Few men in my life were as good and decent as Jim was. I'll never forget him.
RIP
Such a moving tribute. Thanks for sharing your personal memory -- it always helps to know who these people actually were and that they aren't just numbers in a report.
P! Excellent and respectful episode! Keep up the great work! :)
Thank you for sharing your story. At 22:43 you can see his name James T Dehart memorialized in stone. God bless you.
Thanks for keeping his memory alive Josef
I distinctly remember a part of the episode of air crash investigations (or whatever it’s called) about this flight. A guy took his girlfriend to the airport, and back then you could go all the way to the gate without having a ticket etc. He decided to stay and watch her take off, and he was able to see the whole incident. I can’t even imagine what he felt in that 50 seconds. Heartbreaking.
Terrible…
@@MentourPilot Can you do a video on AH 5017 crash ?
@Pippin Wilson*Wow, that is just terrible. My heart aches for this guy (as well as for everyone else's loved ones). So, so sad.*
I also remember from that episode about how the plane had a feature where they used CCTV so the passengers could enjoy the takeoff. I cannot imagine how horrifying it would be to watch your own final moments happening like that.
I remember that episode. If I’m correct, I think in his desperation, he left the airport and ran to the site. Very heartbreaking..
As soon as you mentioned the forklift I knew it was going to be the crux of the problem.
I drove a forklift for years and they are most certainly NOT a tool of precision. Anyone who has used one for 10 minutes knows this. They are jerky, and you have very limited forward visibility due to the boom and sometimes the load. An overhead crane is a much better option especially since the men directly doing the work are in control of the movement.
I’m pretty sure I remember reading about this thing in Michael Crichton’s book _Airframe_ as “one of the two crashes that killed the DC10”, and by extension McDonnell Douglas as a manufacturer of public-facing aircraft.
Does it apply to present-day battery-operated pallet jacks (without the seat and canopy) that are pushed or pulled by the operator?
@@paveladamek3502 how smoothly any given device can be operated is going to entirely depend on what the actual control mechanism is. It’s certainly *possible* to manufacture even forklifts that are buttery smooth and accurate. It’s just…. That’s not what they’re *for*.
@@JasperJanssen I remember some other problems with the DC planes where they had redundant hydraulic systems but they all shares one line which if damaged made the redundancy null and void. I recall reading lots of stories back in 70's and 80s about how crappy their planes were and people pointing to all sorts of things they did to lower costs.
The moment Petter suggested the shortcut, the first thing I thought was, 'oh my god I hope they don't use some kind of forklift, it's a stressed pylon!'.
My friend’s father was on that flight…he was 7 years old when this occurred. He’s now a captain at United Airlines. His dad is looking down proudly at him. 😢
@@grahaml334 he said the father was on the flight. Not the friend.
Aaww that's awesome
Untied Airlines ? 😊
May he rest in peace, Derek.
@@tracycolvin7789 😅
There was another consequence as a result of this accident Mentour. Instead of training pilots to pitch to maintain V2 after an engine failure at V1, it was changed to maintain their current airspeed if the failure occurred above V2, up to a maximum of V2+20kts. The theory being if you are climbing steadily at that current speed then safer to hold it and fly rather than reduce airspeed to maintain V2, and potentially risk a stall situation if the engine failure has caused damage to the aircraft which has increased the stall speed on the wing, exactly as happened in AA 191.
Absolutely! Good point.
Indeed weird how there wasn't extra safety margin built into that speed calculation to account for possible damage.
After all we're not talking about speeds which might cause damage to extended flaps, landing gears etc.
Mechanical parts have long had big safety margin requirements over what's thought as that normal absolute maximum/minimum.
Like how those engine pylon mountings damaged by bad maintenance didn't become instantly critical at first flights after damage.
That occurred to me when watching the video. Not suggesting the pilots should have gone against their training. However when you find yourself in a situation like that a natural reaction would be not to change anything as long as it's flying "like this".
In the case of this incident the pilots had very little time to try and troubleshoot anything :-(
I believe in other situations pilots have resisted making changes as long as the aircraft seemed stable. When preparing to configure for landing they did some testing along the way to see what happens.... if we slow down, what happens if we give a little flaps, a little more flaps, what happens if we put the gear down, etc.
this should have been instinctive on the pilots part-to hell with what the book says, if you loose an engine you reduce power? hell no you add power to maintain speed with the working engine
@@super20dan 50 seconds from wheels off the ground to crashing, not an awful lot of time to go against your training ...
The exact moment of this crash an American Airlines company party for new captains was taking place in Los Angeles. Dad flew for AA 1965-1995 and was attending as a new captain with my mom. During the party the announcement was made of the crash. The party went from celebration to tears and grief as many knew the flight crew. The top brass immediately headed out to Chicago as the party abruptly ended. I was a few days short of 15 and after walking home after school my older sister told me the news. Prior to making captain dad was in the top 1-2 seniority at LAX as first officer and flew the DC10 exclusively. He later retired as captain on the MD11 flying from SEA-NRT. This crash brought days of silence in our home as the reality of this loss impacted us all.
Did you become or think of becoming a pilot?
@@nofurtherwest3474 it's a road not taken ~ it's in my blood ~ my younger brother flies for Alaska ~ sadly toward the end of high school I became very unfocused and lacked direction ~ By the time I gained some real focus the window was gone ~ As a manager of people I have my dad's sense of care and responsibility for my team ~ 2 years after dad retired I asked him what he missed the most... he said 1 word: "responsibility." of course he didn't mind pushing those 3 throttles up for take off either :)
@@chiprawlings7166 Thanks for sharing. Let me ask, when you say the window was gone, why is it gone? There is an age cut off?
@@nofurtherwest3474 I graduated high school in 1982 ~ at that time pretty much the only path was military officer ~ my dad talked about Annapolis growing up but I didn’t have the grades for it ~ years later my brother went to Embry Riddle ~ airline hiring goes in waves ~ my dad was dropping out of college but the Navy really needed pilots in 1958 ~ in 82 the field was saturated ~ my dad got out of Navy in 65 and when he retired AA in 1995 he had just made top 100 out of 10,000 AA pilots ~ right place at the right time ~ now is a great time to pursue aviation as pilots are in demand again ~ my friends dad got hired at United and it was such a bad time he never made captain after years and years with them ~ I got kicked out at 18 and was just learning the live with a bunch of guys renting a house just trying to survive and make my way in the world ~ I’ve had a great life and solid career, but I do wonder what might have been ~ thanks for asking
@alexlindsey6446 what is the age cutoff?
I am a retired aircraft engineer...and at the time of this dreadful accident I was employed by CP Air in YVR. I was licensed on the DC 10 then...and I have to say that as we learned the full story of the forklift being used for this proceedure we were horrified at the sloppy proceedures that were carried out at that time by AA maintenance. We operated the wonderful DC 10 for many years accident free...and at no time would we as engineers have used this method to remove engine and pylon. A number of CP Air pilots did indeed enter the simulator and figgure out how to the DC 10 could have been kept in the air...( with the benefit of hindsight ) but the poor crew in Chicago had no knowledge that the engine had actually departed the wing...causing the retraction of the leading edge devices. I watch your channel a lot..and would like to say thank you for your most informative and well balanced videos. I also believe that titanium was used for that rear mount on the original pylon...and as a result the part was changed to stainless steel which was much more resistant to stress cracking.
As a fellow manufacturing engineer, it literally give me physical pain that they would conduct the maintenance in this way. I oversaw at least 200 leap 1b engines and there were times that I was pressured to “ship the engines or we’ll lose all this money” I flat out said, I will let the engine sit for a day, week, month, or hell, scrap out the whole thing if I am insure of anything I see during inspection.
These aerospace companies must have this mindset. There is no room for greed or shortcuts when so many lives are in the balance.
Very interesting article and video. I was in the Marine Corps (stationed at NAS Glenview) and actually had a ticket to travel on that very flight from O'Hare to LA. Only because of a conflict with my schedule that day, was I spared. I changed my flight to standby on another flight later that day but didn't cancel my ticket right away. But I did get on to the later flight and then canceled my ticket on that flight. I was in the barracks packing, when my shop manager called me and asked if I had my TV turned on. I said "no" and he said turn it on now. What I saw was the news coverage of that terrible accident. I did not change my plans and went to O'Hare later in the day, going through crowds of reporters to get in line and proceeded to board another American Airlines flight to the west coast. It was a very uneventful flight, although the pilot was very quick to communicate any information about turbulence, etc. When we took off, we flew up and over the crash site. So much damage and debris on the ground. I will always remember that eventful day. It was a close call and I can only count my blessings that I was not a passenger on American Airlines Flight 191.
I wonder if there's a flip side to your story -- did a standby passenger get the seat you didn't use that day?
OMG! is all I can say. Bless you Susan.
@@DonDueed Poor soul.
One never does know
@Susan Treadway I, first of all, would like to thank you for your service to our nation. 🇺🇲 I am very glad that you missed this particular flight and that you are still here to share your story. Of course, my heart breaks for the 273 people who lost their lives that day and for their loved ones. 💔 That doesn't mean I cannot be grateful for those whose lives were spared because they had to make a change in their plans that kept them off the accident flights. There was the woman who decided to stay in Tenerife and not continue on KLM flight 4805. There was also the man who barely made it to the gate in Addis Ababa, who begged the gate agents to let him board, and they refused, even though the plane was still at the gate. Little did he know at the time, that by not letting him on the plane (which was initially frustrating for him), those gate agents saved his life, preventing him from being on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (the second Boeing Max crash). I am grateful for those who were spared from being on the fatal flights, while my heart & prayers go out to the victims of these flights and their loved ones. Again, I am grateful for your service to our country and that you are still here. Have a blessed day. 🙏🏻
I have watched many, many documentaries about this accident over the years, and, to your credit, I continue to learn new facts about it, thanks to your detailed and clear presentation. I had no idea how heart-breaking close the pilots came to preventing this tragedy. Thank you for your clear, concise, and detailed presentation, and please continue reviewing them to help us learn and grow as pilots.
Yes,more information here than I had ever seen about this incident ,I had heard however that a bit more speed would have maintained controlability of the aircraft and that the pilots had no way of knowing that the slats/flaps were not remaining as set,in fact,might not have known that the engine was GONE and not just inoperative
think I heard though that "a little extra speed is your friend" from a 100 mile footrace runner who was also a pilot
in the future with any aircraft with an unexpected incident would it be good to routinely try to keep airspeed towards the maximum safe for the config of the aircraft (like there is a max speed for gear down,flaps at such and such setting,slats deployed forward,and such
wish the AA pilot/Captain David Drach were still around (don't think he was into his AA career yet when this incident occurred)
Thats why I watch this channel and a couple others.
My grandmother was at O'Hare to board a flight to Tenerife that day. My dad dropped her off and was waiting with her before she was able to board the flight (as you were allowed to do in those days). This accident happened, and my dad asked my grandmother: "Are you sure you still want to get on the flight and go?!" to which my grandmother replied "*shrugs* What're the odds of it happening to another aircraft?". She boarded and had wonderful time in Tenerife.
Oh man… tenerife…
Tenerife happened in 1977.
Talk about red flags
@@RideAcrossTheRiverthose planes were also originally bound for Las Palmas, and neither went to Chicago first. But the airport on the north side was just dangerous in general
Absolutely correct! Safest form of transportation. More dangerous to cross the street in most cities. It's horrendous when plants go down purely because it's so rare.
What wasn't mentioned in the video is that the plane very narrowly missed the field of oil tanks where the airport's fuel supply was stored. Had the impact site been just a few feet further, it would've been a much more serious disaster potentially taking out an entire neighborhood of mobile homes in addition to the tanks.
I was coming home from school and had just gotten off the school bus walking on the sidewalk towards my home when the accident occurred. We lived approximately 1 mile from the crash site. my mom was running a garage sale at our home that day and was completing a sale when we heard the explosion. We didn't see the impact, but we saw the resulting fireball arise immediately after impact over the homes in our line of sight. Everybody just stood still in shock as our immediate thought was the nearby shopping plaza had been blown up. A big plume of black smoke filled the sky for hours.
*a few feet further*
Bruh, the plane blew apart. You and those tanks were well outside any danger.
@@djanthaz Wrong. The plane blew apart after impact. Prior to impact it had only lost an engine and part of a wing tip. The airplane cartwheeled on impact. Literally one more second of flight time could've been enough to crash into the tanks and/or the mobile home park on either side of the impact zone as flight speed was ~200 mph which translates to a full football field per second. The tanks and mobile homes were less than a football field away from the impact zone. That area has been redeveloped over the years, but at the time of the crash it was very densely packed and a more perilous situation than what you see on google maps today.
Excellent presentation on the facts of this tragic accident. During certification of the DC10, McDonnell-Douglas convinced the FAA that the DC-10 could be safely flown with asymmetric slats. However, they did not consider a failure leading to slat asymmetry immediately following takeoff. Unlike the B747, L1011 and A300, wide body aircraft in service at the same time, the DC10 lacked a slat asymmetry brake system to prevent blowback of the slats in the event of hydraulic rupture or in the case of the other aircraft types slat drive train disconnection. The DC10 was a terribly designed aircraft with a record of 29 hull losses and over 1200 deaths.
@@djanthaz Homie did you watch the video AT ALL? You literally have a pic of it maybe 100ft off the ground about to slam into it, fully intact. Use your brain even a little next time you comment, Okay?
I was in my school bus heading to Conant high school in Hoffman Estates. We saw the mushroom cloud and wondered what had happened.
This and other accidents only confirm that no warning indicator should have a single point of failure. Excellent video as always.
It's impossible to overstate how important redundancy is in aviation.
@@Anonymousaggro
But on the other hand, redundancy can also be bad, as the crash in Sioux city has shown. In that one a turbine wheel in the rear engine exploded because of a crack, disabling all 3 hydraulic systems by cutting the lines and allowing the hydraulic oil to leak out.
@@mrxmry3264 (Disclaimer: Not my area of expertise) That sounds less like an issue caused by the redundancy, and more just like some incredibly bad luck. I don't think there being fewer hydraulic systems would have prevented that incident from happening.
@@mrxmry3264 modern planes have a mix of hydraulics and electrical actuators so you still have some limited control even with no hydraulics.
@@Illdos Yes, the luck was bad but the real issue is that in the case of the DC-10 used for United flight 232 (Sioux City) the 3 redundant hydraulic systems were all grouped physically close together in the tail of the aircraft so that the shrapnel from the disintegration of the number 2 (tail mounted) engine was able to damage all 3 systems resulting in the loss of all hydraulic systems due to fluid loss. This close grouping of the 3 hydraulic systems is a fundamental problem designers have to cope with in the design of aircraft that have the horizontal & vertical stabilisers, rudder and elevator all in the tail. All hydraulic systems must run there in a confined space so there is by definition a loss of redundancy.
In 1981 Eastern Airlines flight 935 (an L1011 aircraft) suffered an un-contained failure in number 2 (centre) engine which also took out 3 hydraulic systems by damaging the close together lines in the tail of the aircraft. Fortunately Lockheed had designed in FOUR redundant hydraulic systems so the pilots were able to control the aircraft and safely land it. That fourth system had been impacted by the shrapnel from the disintegrating engine but it had not been breached.
The bottom line is that in aircraft design redundancy is good and more redundancy is better up to a point where it increases aircraft weight to the point where aircraft operation become un-economic. Clearly though, hydraulic lines that must run near engines that can suffer un-contained failures should have some extra protection in those areas. These accidents happened in the late '70s to the late '80s and we have learned from these lessons.
May 25, 1979 changed my life. That was a Friday, Memorial Day weekend. I worked for GE (GETSCO) in Schenectady in the International Department and flew all over the world. That day I had reservations that day to fly from Albany to O'Hare to LAX on AA191 to spend a week with my parents and brother. There was a very strange circumstance that made me tell the taxi driver that I changed my plans and wanted to go to our office instead of Albany Airport. One of the managers at the office talked me into taking a troublesome assignment in Venezuela. I accepted (he would double my vacation time after the job and GE would pay my plane ticket to LA and back). Later that evening I called my parents to say that I wasn't coming home. They had been crying and unable to speak. My brother finally blurted out that ''your plane crashed.'' I didn't know about it. It was a subject they never brought up while they were alive.
Being 26 years old in a job that could put me anywhere on the planet with no notice at all, it didn't bother me a bit. ''Crashes happen to other people, not me''. The next day, Saturday the 26th, I boarded a DC-10 from JFK to Miami, another DC-10 from Miami to Caracas, then a DC-9 to Maracaibo without a care about aircraft safety in the world. In fact, the DC-9 was piloted by an ex Venezuelan fighter pilot who did some awesome tricks with that plane....the best commercial flight that I have ever been on, almost as good as my P-51 ride.
Years later in 2002, I randomly met an AA Flight Attendant at a flea market that neither of us attended regularly. She became my girlfriend. AA191 came into very bright focus when I found out that her roommate and friend, Flight Attendant Nancy Sullivan, perished on AA191. Her name is at 22:43 right under Captain Lux. In the years that we were together, I met many other AA Flight Attendants and heard their stories about the crash. The topic came up often. Flight Crews are like high school classes. Everybody knows everybody, some get to be really close friends. As the years go by, I realize just how close I actually came to being on AA191.
I had been stranded in all kinds of airports all around the world due to delays, mechanical problems, etc, and had stood in the standby lines at many ticket counters hoping my name would be called. When I would hear my name, it always felt like I won the Lotto. On the day that AA191 went down, I did not cancel my reservations because I was very busy. It now bothers me terribly that some poor soul was overjoyed to take my seat when I didn't show up. This really came in focus after meeting AA Flight attendants in the 2000's who knew Captain Lux and other Flight Crew. A friend in in the San Fernando Valley was at a party a few years ago where it was overheard that a guest's dad perished in the crash of 191 and that he had been a Standby passenger. That bothers me a lot. I'm thankful he chose to remain silent about my experience.
AA191 affected my life. Toss a coin and I would have gone to the airport. Every May 25 is a solemn day for me. I stay alone, sit in the sun, appreciate life, and I read the names of all 271 passengers and the 2 guys who were killed on the ground going about their business. I always chose window seats in hundreds of flights and can imagine hearing and seeing everything that happened that day and can picture the ground coming up at me. I'll always remember AA191 and the huge number of families it affected.
tears.
T
F
These "i was almost there" stories get more elaborate with each video. Lol at anyone thst believes these.
@@etherealrose2139 I don't really give a shit what you believe. I go by what my life led me through. This is what happened to me and I wrote about it as accurately as I experienced it. More for my benefit than yours.
Thank you for breaking this tragedy down so thoroughly, Petter. Every accident with fatalities has a ripple effect. I went to work at one of the big multinational firms in Chicago a year later, and they were still mourning the loss of employees on that flight. They could see the smoke from the crash from their suburban headquarters that day, it was fierce.
My uncle was the head of maintenance for United at SFO during this era and he was always very proud of their safety record. He took the job as ensuring passenger safety rather than keeping the aircraft up for money. This video made me proud of United from back then (my aunt was a stew so I think he had a bit more riding on it literally haha).
Was that a lie?
@rafer Jefferson iii he has a lot in common with me
My grandfather was responsible for the Hindenburg he was the one who came up with the idea of using volatile hydrogen gas with the static charged outer skin that held in the gas
He was very proud up until the day of the crash/ explosion known as
The Hindenburg Disaster
It's nice to have family member that are
So we'll remembered
United used an incorrect procedure for the engine removal on the DC-10 as well. AA we’re just the ones to have something back happen first. Engine was supposed to be removed from the pylon and then the pylon removed.
@@jimmygee3219 The United procedure produced no hairline fractures so it was unapproved but neither flawed nor incorrect.
@@dthomas9230 The procedure was not approved, therefore it was not correct. No one can foresee all potential problems, that it is why it is very important to never deviate from approved procedures. It's a liability issue. If they performed the procedure as described by the manufacturer, the liability would be on the manufacturer. But since they used their own unapproved procedure, they needlessly took on the liability. No one knows if a problem would have developed with United's procedure because they quit the practice immediately after the crash. They do not remove engines with overhead cranes.
My father in law worked for AA for many years and was working this day. He was one of the first on scene, he said it was something he is still haunted by to this day. He said when he got there right after (within minutes) the accident he was staring at a show for a full min before realizing it was not only a shoe but a shoe with a foot still inside. My father in law is a very quiet man and doesn’t show a lot of emotion but seeing him talk about this was something I will never forget. The look on his face was very clear, he was back in the moment he first got there. He also was the one in charge of driving the board of directors (or whatever they call their executive office people) to the crash site from the AA terminal and while he was driving they were talking amongst each other like he wasn’t there. They were very cold and acted like the people on board were the ones who were going to cause them to loose money. He said he nearly broke the steering wheel as he heard them say “I hope the crash site isn’t too gory because the press are going to have a field day and the bloodier the pictures are the more money we are going to have to pay out to the families. With any luck the bodies will be burned beyond the point of being able to identify them as actual body parts” they had not even gotten to the crash site yet and they were talking about these poor people like they were nothing. They were basically blaming them for loosing money and now they would be the cause of them not being able to buy the summer home this year. It was the one and only time he ever spoke of it. He only said something because we were watching the news a news cast came on to discuss the 30 year anniversary. He was very clearly affected by it and still is to this day. But he’s a very stoic man and so I highly doubt he will ever discuss it again. I will never forget the look on his face when he talked about that day. He was newly married and and he had not yet started his family with my mother in law yet. That would come a few years later. He worked for AA for many years after that and I think it was because he was one person who cared about the passengers and he took pride in making sure they had a good flight but most importantly made it to their destination safely. He was very serious about the safety of passengers and crew and he also made sure to always take care of his guys because he never wanted them to loose focus and make a mistake that could get someone hurt or killed. He is an amazing man and I am proud of his years of service to the passengers and crew of Ohare. He retired before my husband and I met but I love hearing my husband talk about the stories of his dad working there. My FIN is pretty amazing.
Katlyn Thank You for Sharing that. Your Father in Law Comes from an era Of People that we Don't See enough of these days!!!
God-Bless.
@@guyhillock4860 thank you. He is definitely a unique man. He doesn’t show a lot of emotion but, that is because he grew up in a very tough home with a lot of abuse and he was the one who would step up and take the punishments because he was the biggest of his siblings. He may not always show it but he loves his kids (they call me the bonus daughter) and he is absolutely amazing with his grandkids. When I got married to my husband my father had already passed away and when I was trying to decide who I was going to ask to walk me down the isle instead it came down to my brother in law who has been a big brother to me for over 10 years and my soon to be father in law. My FIL told me to give the honor to my brother in law because he had been in my life longer and he deserved that more than he did. Instead he and my mother in law stepped in to pay for my wedding dress as a present to me. In their family the daughters parents purchase the brides dress as a gift to her but, my parents have since passed away so they surprised me by stepping in in their honor. They didn’t tell me this until after I had tried on a gown and chosen one. I’m very very lucky to have an incredible set of in laws. I absolutely love them, my dad only got to meet them once and my mom was already passed away for 6 years when I met my husband but I know they would have gotten along really well. Especially my dad and father in law.
Learn to use the meaning of distinct "paragraphs" ffs, text like that is a horror to the eyes and it's plain unreadable.
@@Ice.muffin way to nick pick someones heart felt post. grow up
@@ChouhouinNeko There's smth called "improvement" for pretty much eveything, not that you'd know about it, early. Maybe stop being so butthurt abt someone's opinion, grow up.
This wasn’t the first time an airline cut corners to save money and it certainly won’t be the last
Alaska Airlines 727 says hello.
I work on coatungs for jet engines. While training (30 yrs ago), slight issue w the thickness of coating. Trainer said to me, "Just Dont fuckin fly", laughs and throws the 'sample' into the waterfall. (Spray booth collector).
Without excusing the airlines, I think the airplane designers also need to continue to improve the serviceability of the new airplanes to reduce the need for resorting to ad-hoc and Jerry-rigged procedures.
I still fly though. After a few shots, all is good. When Its time, its time.
That's why we need independent oversight. I literally flinched when I heard "FAA had given oversight responsibilities to maintenance within the airlines". Sigh.
As an experienced forklift driver who's had to move with extreme precision on many jobs, I am shocked that this was even attempted. I wouldn't do this without an FPV camera set up on the forklift. Granted this was 1978 and real time camera feeds weren't really even possible yet, I can see why this wouldn't have been an option. That said, when dealing with fine movement, one person's "up a bit" is usually different to another person's idea of what "up a bit" is. A mirror jig should have been improvised to allow the forklift driver to view the distance themselves. As for the report stating that "no drift" was found on the forklift, that is simply not true. All forklift booms will "drift" if left in a loaded state, raised. The hydraulic pressures begin to decrease when the engine is shut off due to not being constantly topped up by the engine pressurisation. Despite popular belief, forklift drivers are HIGHLY trained and tested before entering work in an official capacity. This tragedy lies directly on the forklift driver's decision to perform the delicate work without being able to see it (I doubt anyone would think it acceptable for a brain surgeon to perform surgery without being able to see what he's cutting). Disappointing.
I would think you would need surgical level precision of movement to do it safely, but I doubt that was possible back in 78. It might be possible now, but as someone who likes to fly, I hope not.
As they say, FAA regs are written in blood. We learn from our mistakes. God forbid we let them happen again.
the tragedy lies in the suits' and engineers' decision to deviate from the manufacturer's instructions. A procedure that relies on perfect forklift operation like this will eventually fail. The forklift operator was likely a mechanic and not a forklift specialist. If he refused, they'd find someone who wouldn't. Mechanics nowadays have some power to refuse BS like this, but back then probably not so much
@@Ryan-cy7zw Agreed! Often, we maintenance guys have to reckon with the suits. I can tell you from personal experience, I lost quite a bit in career progression and bonuses but stuck to my guns - always - for refusing to do what the suits wanted if in my judgement what they wanted me to do would diminish air safety. Back then (1970/1980s), we had NO protection whatsoever, though theoretically we can approach the DCA (FAA equivalent) direct.
@@ericALAGAN thanks for making things better for us young mechanics, I truly appreciate it
Back in the 90's my dad would often fly in and out of town through O'Hare and as a treat my my mom would bring me along so I could watch the planes taxi in and out as we waited at the terminal with him. My parents fondly remember one time when I was 6 or so (and I was very into planes) I watched a huge plane taxi into the terminal. I recognized it and turned to my dad and said "You're getting a DC10 today? You're so lucky!" At that point, several people got up to go talk to the ticketing counter to change their flights. When I asked what was happening, my dad explained and told me about this accident.
We mostly remember this as the time I cleared out half a flight for my Dad.
Haha that's a great story
I had to laugh at this too, I told my wife about the DC-10 that lost hydraulic power and cartwheeled on the tarmac before news cameras in the 80's or 90's. She was born in the 90's, and was equally amused that there was a time where family could see you off at the gate without needing a ticket or passing through security!
Ahh yes, Death Craft 10.
What a story!
I loved the DC-10! When I lived in Hawaii in the 1970s the only options we had to travel out of State was the 10, 707 or 747.
I didn’t care for the narrow body 707 so it was always DC-10 or 747 for me.
I find it amazing that investigators can determine the exact cause of a crash working from what the rest of us would see as a pile of wreckage.
To you and me, it's a widely scattered field of shrapnel... To an investigator, it's just the world's most complicated jig-saw puzzle. ;o)
Its just like forensics in csi. The person is deceased and investigators put together the puzzle pieces to figure out exactly what had happened.
A jet engine still on the runway may have been a BIG clue.
I see it as a grave site not a pile of wreckage
@@niaj7400 Emotional responses have no place in accident investigation. If we treated crash sites like war graves we would have little way to avoid them happening again.
How terrible that fate hangs on details. The pilots were perfectly capable of flying the damaged airplane; the airplane was perfectly capable of flying. It was only the lack of two messages that should have been passed to the flight crew by the damaged airplane that ended the life of nearly 300 people.
Let's not forget, this would never had happened had the airline followed the correct process to maintain the aircraft. Passengers and flight crew paid the ultimate price for their decision.
Your statement is an exaggeration of the of the capability of this aircraft continuing a flight to a successful landing.
@@joecoolioness6399 Of course, if we never came down from the trees, it would never happened......
Still a shame that the hydraulics didn't have a more redundant setup including protection valves and low pressure warnings,think those might have been added post accident,also surprising that there wasn't a safety crossfeed capability built into the electrical system supplying both sides' cockpit features.
I wonder if the Flight Crew ever realised that they were dealing with more than just an engine failure and they probably didnt even know about the damage to the wing or that the engine had completely detached and was lying on the runway . ATC noticed what had happened but there was very little time to tell the flight crew and they were too busy dealing with trying to keep the aircraft flying so they could return to the airport .
Excellent job of explaining the fine details of what led up to this tragedy. The father of a friend of mine was aboard this ill fated flight. I knew him. The last I heard of this accident was the plane had complete hydraulic failure after engine separation rendering it uncontrollable. Your explanation of the wing stalling, how the pilots had little indication of it happening and knowing their proximity to the ground brings it into complete focus. Unfortunately, as always, hind sight is 20/20. Thank you for hard work and dedication
Thank you for watching Richard. I’m
Glad if it cleared up some details about it.
Just came upon this video. Fantastic work!
I was at the terminal that day, waiting at the gate for my flight. I saw the plane take off, then stand on its wingtip. It disappeared behind another building, and I did not see it crash, but did see the fireball. I think I yelled 'Holy S...', and remember people around me turning to look. There were gasps and outcries from other passengers. I was so numb, as were many passengers in the queue, that I don't remember much of my flight, only that it was delayed for two hours before we boarded.
It took me years to rebalance my love of flying commercial with the horror of that moment. Unfortunately, this video is so good that it brought back flashes of that day..
I was on that DC10 on the previous flight before it crashed. Captain Lux was the same pilot. When we took off on that flight from Phoenix the plane shook violently and there was a hush of silence in the cabin. The flight was normal after that. I was on Mannheim Road when 191 crashed. It was surreal. At that time I did know I was on that previous flight until I read about it in the newspaper later.
I think the 911 is sort of the worst accident for airline history, probably due to incompetent pilots instead of terrorists attack, the terrorist attack is a fluke the government created to justify surveillance and invade their countries of choice.
I was an instructor at a school that trained aircraft mechanics. Talked about this crash very often.
Excellent! Glad it taught safety albeit at the sad cost of so many souls.
I'm very glad to hear that this is taught. You never want this to happen again.
This brings back the old adage, in an accident situation, speed and altitude are your best friends. you do not wan to be trading speed you want to get fast because control surfaces, wing lift, all like speed. many pilots i know in a situation like this would increase power to the other 2 engines, apply rudder, keep the plane as level as they could but shallow out the climb... keep bringing the speed up to and not touch the flaps or gear. While that sounds counter intuitive, they don't know the extent of the damage, if they are losing or going to lose hydraulic pressure... so moving the gear risks it being in an unsafe situation... and moving the flaps risks them not coming up or going down properly. once they are up around 240 knots and above 5000 feet, then begin trouble shooting including visual inspections. but again, part of that is hind sight based on several aircrashes like this.
@@jenniferstewarts4851 it's unfortunate that lessons like this have to come at such a substantial loss of life but I'm glad to hear pilots are much more knowledgeable today of these situations.
@@fumyea79 The problem is, many are not. many pilots, especially younger ones, don't know about older crashes, and many companies only teach standard "recoveries". Something as simple as turning on the APU when all engines fail seems logical, but for some companies its not even on the check list.
Thank you for clarifying exactly how the maintenance procedure went wrong. Previous programs that I’ve watched never really got the details of that correct. I have to say it really seems like they traded 200 man hours of work for 200 lives.
The mistake in the maintenance procedure was using a forklift. Reducing 200 man hours would normally be ill-advised, but it was considered a safety benefit since it involved less detachments of cables and wires.
I remember this vividly. The following year I was in the US Air Force, being sent to West Germany for a new duty assignment. I took some leave and went home to Wisconsin to see family, and then to the Chicago area to visit with more family. We had talked about this crash the day before I left for O'Hare to catch my flight. We took off from the same runway as AA191. I had a window seat, and the burned-out area was very visible. It was huge. It didn't scare me at all. But I remember feeling sad for a while. Even more sad is AA was trying a new perk for passengers. They had a camera mounted so the passengers could get a pilot's view of the takeoff. These people possibly watched throughout. AA stopped this after this disaster. Six years later when I was finished serving in the military, I settled in the Chicago area. I once drove over to the trailer park adjacent to the crash site and walked back there. I was amazed to find small pieces of debris still there. This after eight years.
A lot of people have mentioned the cameras and video but once that plane was tipping I doubt and people were hanging by their seatbelts I doubt anyone was looking at that don’t you think?
@@MAXIMUSMINIMALIST no because they would experience an acceleration towards the plane floor
I've read and watched other accounts of this incident, but this one was the most detailed and informative.
That’s also true of every incident he presents. This has got to be one of the best channels on RUclips. I’m enthralled.
I gotta agree with both of you. The only reason I can get passed him snapping his lips every 30 seconds is because of how informative, thorough, educational, and his attention to detail in his videos, and it's truly every single one. I do enjoy a lot of other aviation videos and every single one I watch are all extremely detailed, but Mentour has an ability to take it to another level and that's a huge credit to him because these other channels are insanely detailed, so the fact he's able to be even more informative and remain interesting, it's like truly a talent. You learn more from his videos than you learn in flight school and that's not even an exaggeration lol
I don't know where he got (or made) those animations with the forklift and crane engine lifts, but it really helped to get into the grit of the story. Of course it's a BAD sign when that much is know and explained about the details of such work . . . that is where the devil lives ! B-)
Agree
I live near Chicagos O'Hare airport, I remember when this happened, it was a real tragedy. I recognize the picture that the person caught in the parking lot it was all over the news at that time.
I could watch you describe the process of paint drying and be entertained/informed. You're simply the best at what you do.
😂😂😂😂 me too!!
Now I want to see him do a video on the process of paint drying!!!!!!
This would make an amazing April 1 video
I was a social science major, now a fiber artist/seamstress/stay at home mom, and I have mental health issues that occasionally turn me into a barely-sentinent couch dweller. Not only do I understand every single one of your videos, but you made me INTERESTED in something again. And it's aviation, of all things?! You have a gift, sir. Thank you for your incredibly well-made content and for sharing your phenomenal teaching style with everyone. So good.
There were changes that happened in the business world after this flight that may still stand today. I was a frequent flyer then and often flew with others in my department. We had a trip planned several days after the crash. I still have burned in memory the sight of looking down as we took off and seeing the crash remains. The business impact is that there were many people killed who worked for the same company. (Check news reports for details.) As a result many businesses established rules about the number of people who could travel together on the same flight. We would think about this flight every time we made travel arrangements.
There was, years ago, a plane accident that killed all the senior leaders of an electronics company, maybe Arrow Electronics.
One of the most iconic crashes ever, I used to wonder why it couldn't fly with the other 2 engines but even though I know the reason because I looked it up, I'm thrilled to watch your analysis and learn more about it
I love that you don't dumb these down. Don't know what a spherical bearing or clevis are? Look 'em up! :) Seriously---LOVE this series. You bring so much clarity and insight to these events. Also your animator needs a raise!
I'd cut his pay tbh. The engine bouncing on the tarmac was pretty poor.
This is the aircraft that my first cousin had just deplaned from as it had just arrived at O'Hare. Needless to say she freaked out when she learned of the crash after her departure!
Borrowed time
I was working breakfast in a coffee shop when a dear friend of my mother's came in. As I served her, she told me her brother-in-law had been killed in this crash. I wonder how many "degrees of separation" any of us have between ourselves and people who have died in terrible accidents. Thank you for a great piece, as always.
It's crazy how the quality of these gets better and better, the infographics really give us who aren't in the aviation industry a dearer understanding.
The donations are being put to good use🤩
Excellent analysis! Here’s why I’ll watch every Mentour video: I’ve seen 3 or 4 programs on this accident. Here’s what is unique in Mentour’s work.
1. United used a crane to detach the pylon / engine assembly and didn’t have the same damage that American and Continental did in their fleets.
2. The damage reports on the maintenance procedure stopped at operator error. My blood ran cold when I heard that. If you’ve ever done any training on root cause analysis or six sigma you know that you never stop at human error. You always look further at the system that allowed the error to slip through.
3. The single point of failure on the stall warning, stick shaker, and slat indicators.
4. The comparison of V2 and the left wing stall speed. On every prior video, I always asked myself, “they could see the horizon. Why didn’t they bank right?” They tried. They never knew their left wing was stalled. It’s so awful.
3. DAC provisioned for that with a battery backup option to restore power for 30 minutes if all else failed. But neither pilot turned the knob.
@@marcmcreynolds2827 The Knob was under a panel they couldn't physically access in a hurry.
@@darthkarl99 We must be talking about different knobs/systems. From the NTSB accident report: "The battery and static inverter operations can be obtained by rotating the emergency power switch on the pilot's overhead panel to the 'on' position." Look up a graphic for the overhead panel, and you will see EMER PWR almost right in the middle between the pilots. Its knob shape is somewhat different than other switches in vicinity, presumably to help with identification by feel in a suddenly dark cockpit.
@@marcmcreynolds2827 I'm going off the seconds from disaster documentary on the matter which stated that at the time the power switch to activate the batteries was behind a floor level panel underneath the flight engineers station.
@@darthkarl99 Interesting. I wonder if that panel in some way relates to "our" system, or the documentary people simply got bad information from someone. Pilots used as talking heads in those documentaries, for example, sometimes know what they are talking about and sometimes not*. Especially when it's an abmormal situation which goes beyond their training, the accuracy can get iffy ("If you reject the takeoff beyond V1, there's no way the aircraft is going to be able to stop on the runway").
* An additional, sort of humorous wrinkle on the talking-heads-in-documentaries genre comes from an engineer I happen to know who was a regular on one of those series ("Megastructures"? -- I forget). She's saying all these authoritative things about how difficult it was to cantilever that skyscraper's top floor or whatever, while in reality she hasn't even seen a picture of the building in question and is simply reading whatever words were handed to her (IIRC by her second season she at least had some input). So anyway, these shows tend to be at the mercy of whatever level of knowledge/ignorance the producers and writers bring to them.
I will never, ever forget the haunting photo of this crash. Still gives me chills. Thank you, as always, for an exceptional video.
They had an onboard video system. Not the same as the A380, but similar. It gave the passengers an outside view for the takeoff....I hope that the video feed went offline when the no.1 engine detached....but I dont know for sure.
Same - it’s like the Concorde one. Seconds before many people will inevitably lose their lives and you can do absolutely nothing…
@@nickkaning7616 I remember hearing about that, too. And I hope you’re right that it went offline.
@@zaaajac Reminds me of vaccine mandates.
Thank you for how you presented this case. You're the only one who showed that this was a survival incident. That makes this truly heartbreaking for me
Talking about simulators... I wonder what kind of technology they had back then and if they were good enough. Maybe a video about the history of flight simulators and their technology would be nice! 😄
Yes, indeed.
Absolutely! History of flight sims and pilot training would be great.
That's a great idea
During the late 1980s I was lucky enough to have a go in the Harrier simulator at RAF Wildenrath (Strangely they had a Harrier sim at a base that was equipped with Phantom FGR2, and the Harrier base had the Phantom sim). I'm not an expert but that simulator was absolutely incredible and capable of simulating any fault that the plane was capable of having). I would guess that the technology of simulators for civilian aircraft was of the same sort of quality and same sort of capabilities too. There is a possibility that it's the same manufacturer for civilian simulators as the military ones. They've improved a hell of a lot since the days of the 'Link Trainer'!
Computers were okay for the physics part, but 3D graphics were way beyond their capabilities (I think the first 3D graphics card was made in 1995 for SGi's Irix system). Once I tried a Tu-154 simulator from that era. and it used a camera over a model for the picture. It also had a control panel to introduce malfunctions into the system for training.
I just want to say that I was a 19, 20 year old kid at the time and I remember remember that crash so well. Even though the crash happened at O'Hare International Airport near Chicago, I could still see the smoke from that crash in Crystal Lake Illinois, which is about 30 miles Northwest of the crash site. I was deeply saddened and shocked by this event and I have never forgotten it.
I remember this accident and was greatly troubled by the loss of life. I was aware of the other accidents involving the DC-10.
I refused to fly on the DC-10 from that time on. Through personal connections to the McDonnell Douglas company I learned of the dodgy forklift engine detachment cause.
I appreciate your review of this accident. As is always the case you provide a thoughtful review and expert analysis. Thank you for all your efforts.
yes, the manufacturer needed a scape goat and it became the certificated airmen who actually do the job. insulate the corporation and the government. That's the number one priority in all of these mishaps. The crew chief actually committed suicide because the government, the company, and even the union convinced him it was his fault. A good friend of my father's was on that engine change crew.
Hydraulic fuses (like Boeings have) would have prevented this crash. AA's Maintenance/Engineering applied to both Douglas and the FAA to modify its DC10s with these devices: Denied.
Maintaining airspeed, rather than increasing pitch to reduce airspeed (procedurally) ... would have prevented this crash.
There are only two laws which must be honored in aviation to aviate --- lift must be greater than weight and thrust must be greater than drag. All other procedures need to be evaluated for appropriateness.
One macabre detail you left out was the fact that this particular plane had a camera inside the cockpit, which was streaming to a display somewhere in the cabin so passengers could see what the plane was doing from the pilots' point of view. Assuming the loss of engine 1 didn't kill power to the camera, it's very likely that the passengers got a live stream of their impending demise as the plane went down. Quite horrifying.
Holy shit, that's actually horrifying.
@@J35_drakennn Yeah seriously! I wouldn't be surprised if this event was the reason airlines don't really do this anymore. God, imagine being in this situation and, to your horror, you look at the screen and notice that not only are you in a dire situation, you can actually watch everything unfold as it happens! Good god I can't imagine what that must've been like! I know the Airbus A380 has a camera on the tail that points forward that passengers can monitor from their seats, but I don't know of any others that do this.
those pilots were incompetent. you dont need a machine to tell you when you are stalling, and if you lose an engine then obviously you need more thrust and keep the nose further down
@@Starcraft387 I think the 777 might have it, but I'm not very sure.
Alright so it said the 747-8 and the 777-300ER.
I was a ten year old living about 15 miles from the scene. I remember being on the playground at my school and seeing the plume of smoke rise. My Grandmother, who lived near O’Hare, was a nurse at a nearby hospital, I don’t know which one for sure. They set up an emergency mass casualty ward for the wounded who never arrived.
I'm sorry to hear that :(
You must be 65 now
Wow. Just wow. So awful.
@@adash7841 which just about matches your IQ
@@adash7841Crash was in 1979…
This is the most lucid and informative account of this accident I have seen. I was in AA ops there that morning and saw what turned out to be that DC-10 taxi out. A while later, the entire ops area, which was always noisy with crew member conversations, went silent as word was passed down. When the story broke on the TV news a bit later, we found out how bad it was. The airport did not shut down, though, or at least not for long, because our crew flew out a few hours later.
Thank you for sharing your very personal story associated with what happened that day .
For you , and many others , a truly unforgettable day .
I've been waiting for the right video of yours to mention my story.
I once operated a forklift that required very tight precision. We had minimal room to operate. We were picking up large metal totes of fruit and liquid. You COULD NOT spill anything. You then had to place a tote (about 3k lbs US) on a conveyor belt. As soon as you placed it, an eye sensor would trigger and you had about 8 seconds to place and back out. If you didn't do this correctly, the belt would break and the production line would shut down for around 2 hours. It was VERY stressful.
Now, imagine that you're doing 100 times more operations and YOUR life and MANY OTHER LIVES are on the line! THAT'S STRESSFUL!
My hat is more than tipped to airline pilots who do this hundreds of times in their careers! Well done people!
Excellent video. I was stuck in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway at Cumberland not far from where flight 191 went down. I saw the fireball and the smoke. I thought that fuel tanks off of Touhy Avenue had blown up. I immediately turned on news radio, and they said there were unconfirmed reports of a plane crash at at O’Hare. My heart just sank realizing I had just witnessed the death of all these people. I still think about it every memorial day weekend.
I remember this well. My dad drove us to O'Hare to view what could be seen of the wreckage. I was 14 at the time and it was very disturbing. However it never dampened my urge to fly on vacations.
I think there must have been maintenance personnel at the time who had severe misgivings about using a fork truck to align that mount. With the weight of the engine, the dicey balance, and the sloppy accuracy of fork truck hydraulics it seems like damage would be nearly assured.
Agreed. No way it would happen today. That's backyard shonky style maintenance really. So many complexities not even considered in the procedure. It's a shame people had to pay with their lives for it...
I know... this accident has always infuriated me! I can't believe the maintenance people couldn't see how dangerous their shortcut was.
@@gregorylubbers8533 what really gets me here is the other way of solving it. They just took a crane. Like wtf, that's the first thing I would think of if I had to lift something up. It's not even difficult to do, they didn't need some super special equipment...
@@chrissim4386 you can be sure the crane option was more expensive. Why do that when you can just get Jimmy to hop in the forklift you use in the warehouse.
Enraging.
Needed a bigger forklift...
And a cradle with built in hydraulic jacks for adjusting alignment.
Then they could apprach from forward instead of the side, and do the fine adjustments from where the workers could observe needed movement.
The pilots could only act based on the information they had, and the information they had was limited due to the electrical damage caused by the engine detachment. I initially learned about this on Fascinating Horror's channel, but hearing the breakdown from a pilot gives even more information. That picture and the one of the explosion afterwards is just chilling.
I know this is off topic and may come off as rude or offensive but are you a 9/11 conspiracy person/Truther (aka, Conspiracytard)? Again I’m not trying to be rude. Just curious.
May 25,1979, Memorial Day weekend, my plane was behind this one. When we took off we flew thru the smoke. I was 19 years old flying home from AF tech school at Chanute afb. I was on a DC-10 also. I didn’t find out what happened until I got home. My plane was going to Houston, flt 191 was going to LA. Years later I got to go to the memorial near a little lake, I sat down read the names, and I cried.
A local man in my town Stephen Greene was on this flight We used to ride dirt bikes down in the sand pit adjacent to his book press I didn’t know him well though He was one of only a handful of people who couldn’t be identified in this crash
All these years later i still get a sick feeling. A very well liked father whose passion was NHRA Drag racing lost his 18 yr old Daughter, who had travelled that route a dozen times. 50 seconds of pure hell.
Isn't it odd that it will hit you without warning, oftentimes in public when you can fall apart of try to keep it together?
Or pure bliss.
This plane crashed into a closed airport named Ravenswood.
My father was a flight instructor at Ravenswood before it closed. I spent many Saturdays and Sundays at Ravenswood with my father. Although the airport was closed for years, a hanger still existed at the time of the crash where a few people worked selling new and used aircraft parts.
The DC-10 crashed into the hanger, killing those employees too.
I happened to be driving westbound on the tollway that was about 3/4 of a mile north of O’Hare’s northern boundary and was the north boundary of Ravenswood airport, the crash site, at the time of the crash.
The DC-10 crashed south of the tollway and was behind me. I saw the billowing smoke and fire. The pilots had only seconds to react to losing, literally, their left engine.
The local radio station first reported the airplane as a freighter. Within half an hour they reported that it was in fact a American Airlines DC-10 passenger flight, bound for LAX and all aboard were feared killed.
So very sad for everyone.
Wow, tragic story 😥
I struggle to imagine going to work in a ground based role that's not at an airport and getting killed by a downed plane. Kudos to the pilots, who were doing everything right, given the information that they had. Thoughts to the families and collegues of those killed.
Interesting trivia regarding Flight 191. Lindsay Wagner, the actress that played Jaime Sommers in the Bionic Woman for two years (1976-1978) was scheduled to be on this flight but suddenly felt very ill while waiting for the plane. She skipped the flight.
A lot of people will say that premonition isn't real, but I bet a lot of the passengers of that flight felt something wasn't right. I've learned that it's usually a good idea to follow your "gut instinct". Doing so is probably the only reason I'm still alive today. I've had a lot of close calls with death in my life.
0⁹⁹⁹⁹
I had a huge crush on her back in the day.
Lol that's nonsense. People who die young, wake up not expecting to die. They just do. No gut instincts. Just not some people's time. @@NotSoCrazyNinja
@@NotSoCrazyNinjaexample?
I remember when this happened in Chicago in '79. I still have the Time magazine covering the story. They kept showing the photos that caught the aircraft in its climb right after takeoff but it rolled dramatically to the left nearly inverted on its side. You could clearly see the engine missing from the wing. Very incredible photos. All we kept hearing was DC-10 this and DC-10 that....
I've seen documentaries on this disaster but what I like about this channel is the mechanical details that you go into and how I leave the video with a much fuller idea of how these things actually happen.
I was in the Air Force when this accident happened in 1979. Excellent explanation of what happened. I read the NTSB report and have always felt bad about this incident. The picture of the plane at a over 90° bank is actually terrifying but thank you for making it so, easy to understand what actually happened. I love your channel in your videos. Thanks keep them coming!
I flew to London and Copenhagen a couple of months after this accident. I remember people applauding when landing because they were happy to have survived the flight. I think this started a "tradition" of some people applauding on landing that persists today (2024).
I worked with one of the mechanics who did that engine change. We never talked about it. Also, the AA Hangar Bay 2 was used as a morgue. Years later, you could smell the death coming out of the floor drains. Some people have claimed they could see people wandering about that hangar bay only to disappear. Call me skeptical on that one. The deaths of people on the ground was fortunately low. There was (and still is) a trailer park only a few hundred feet from the crash site. I was a teenager when this happened, and I saw the smoke from the crash from 10 miles away. As an airline mechanic, I've never forgotten it.
My father was 17 and he was traveling east on IL-72 near West Dundee and could see the smoke in the distance. As a kid anytime we were traveling into the city on I-90 he would point over to the mobile home park and the storage tanks and talk about the accident.
Claims of partially visible people in an area with mass casualties have been reported for centuries. Nothing new.
😿😿😿
I worked with someone who’s brother was part of that maintenance crew. Not sure if he was a mechanic or engineer, but seeing this video on what he told me years ago makes a lot of sense, especially regarding the forklift.
@@timd612 So his brother is a negligent mass murderer
What a tragic accident, and to think of this same plane flying back and forth for a while with this tragedy waiting to happen. Also terrifying to think of those other 6 planes that had similar problems, and that could have also ended badly. The thoroughness of the investigations post-incidents are truly remarkable !
13:08 "which led to the engine initiating a detachment from the wing" These engines are so sophisticated, they don't just break off.
Actually if a engine failure takes place were there's a sudden stop or vibration of the engine, they are designed to rip off and tumble over the wing. However they rip off at the pylon attachment point were there are safety valves to close the hydraulic lines to prevent lose of fluid. A coworker of mine was flying as a flight mechanic on a Kalitta Cargo 747 out of Detroit. The crew summon him up to the flight deck and asked him to check the #3 engine because they lost all indication. He came back to report he knew what the problem was, the engine was gone. Later they found it in lake Michigan. They Landed without incident.
@@np1000 how lucky he was there at the time and was able to solve the puzzle and save the plane.
@@np1000 That really highlights the importance of using the correct engine maintenance procedure to ensure the pylon remains the failure point instead of its attachment to the wing.
A bystander got a photo of the plane flying sideways right before it crashed. That photo was on the front page of every Chicago newspaper.
Two managers that I worked with in 1979 were on that flight - one had 7 children, the other had 9 children. At the time, we never really heard how the accident occured. This analysis answers a lot of questions. Very complete.
This is by far the best reconstruction of this accident that I've ever seen. Thank you for your hard work...!!
For personal reasons I have read/watched everything that I can find about this accident since the day that it
happened. After it became available online, I read the NTSB report of the accident annually on the day. This may be the best (worst) example of your Swiss cheese model. So many things had to lineup to go wrong in just the right way.
Your Captain’s explanation of what the crew was experiencing and the statement that they did everything they could be expected to do was meaningful and calming. Thank you.
What are your reasons if you don’t mind me asking?
Mentour Pilot….. I’ve watched a lot of RUclips videos on aviation. I am a medically retired airline captain, check airman and FAA gold seal flight instructor. I literally started flying at age 4 when my dad had a super cub and rented a Piper Turbo Arrow for family flights. I don’t recall many days of my life where flying wasn’t a part of my daily life in one way or another. I just want to say your video are some of the absolute best I’ve experienced in my life. Your videos are absolutely relevant and informative to professional pilots while also being of great informative content to people who are just curious or love aviation. I imagine making these videos has taught you so much and indeed made you a better pilot.
I learned more as a non flying check pilot, a check airman, a ground school instructor and as a flight instructor than I ever could have done just studying as a student in class.
Thank you for making these. I cant help but believe your videos are making professional pilots better by helping them to think “what if” I were to find myself in the same situation.
I was nine years old and we lived in Chicago when this happened. This is one the worst memories from my childhood. Our family took this trip from ORD to LAX at least once a year to visit with relatives. I loved Aviation as a young child and that has never wavered, even after this horrible event. My parents knew about my love of planes and I had many models and books. We often flew on 747's, 727's and DC-10's. The DC-10 was my favorite because of that beautiful three engine design. I think my Father knew something because looking back and talking to family after this tragedy I know we hadn't flown on the DC-10 for a couple years previous to that day. I remember that day clearly. We only had half a day of school because of the holiday(Memorial Day). I was outside playing with friends. We didn't live close to ORD, we were near the lake, anyway. Mom called me in and we watched the news together. Devastated, shocked, upset, confused. Those were the emotions of a nine year old who loved airplanes and just witnessed the worst crash...ever. That photo...that photo still haunts me although I am completely still flying . I now live near the airport with a perfect view of almost all the flights arriving on most of the newly configured runways. I live just minutes from the site of 191. I go often. I have friends who had family that were going to be on that flight but ere not for various reasons. Petter, I have seen and read just about everything there is on this fateful flight but nothing compares to your knowledge, understanding and depth at relating this to us. I don't know why I didn't see your story when you posted it. Also Petter, quick question. When we usually traveled to LA from Chicago it would be in the dead of winter. Christmas break or January. Would the added cold have exacerbated these cracks, fractures maybe making it more revealing to the Engineers? I did not research the alloys that were used. Some are prone to fatigue with temp differences and others become brittle when constantly cold. Thank you so much for your channel! Keep up the the great work.
I've always been under the impression that the detachment of the engine severed the connection to ALL systems of the aircraft, leaving it completely uncontrollable. I never would have thought that the flight crew would have been able to recover, if only they had sufficient information about the predicament they were in.
You might have been thinking of United Airlines Flight 232 that crashed ten years later in Sioux City, Iowa. Flight 232 lost all hydraulic power. From the final report for American Airlines Flight 191, it looks to me like they are confidant it still had at least one of the three hydraulic systems operating. And that it might have had all three. It was estimated that at the maximum fluid loss rate, the hydraulic system would have operated for 4 minutes before running dry. Much longer than the 30 to 40 seconds between the engine separation and the crash.
@@andrewsnow7386 I doubt they could ever have had all three systems still operating, since one of them was driven by the departed left engine, surely. Might have had two, one certainly hopes they would have had at least one (surely McD wouldn't have grouped all three systems closely together in the leading edge, as well as the tail...)
@@cr10001 You are right, the No 1 hydraulic system was not operating. With the engine torn off, it did lose all it's hydraulic fluid.
When I read the hydraulic section of the report, the 4 min. was the minimum time the No. 3 hydraulic system would have operated. I misread it and thought it was talking about the No.1 system. Note that there are backup pumps that can supply hydraulic power in a system when it's engine is down.
Anyway, after a more careful reading of the report, I found:
"Since two of the three hydraulic systems were operative, the Safety Board concludes that, except for the No.2 and No. 4 spoiler panels on both wings which were powered by the No. 1 hydraulic systems, all flight controls were operating."
@@andrewsnow7386 Thanks for that! If only the flight crew had known, this would have been a relatively straightforward emergency landing.
@@andrewsnow7386 My interpretation is that the 3 "redundant" hydraulic systems on that airplane were not really "redundant",at least not unless some special gymhanka were performed by the flight crew who probably had no indication that anything was wrong with the hydraulics
When this happened, I was 12 years old and lived several miles from Ohare. I remember sitting on my porch and seeing the huge black smoke clouds trailing into the air after the crash. Every time I fly out from Ohare, on takeoff I think about that tragedy. I now live just a few miles from Ohare, just under the newly completed runway path and I’m constantly reminded of it when I see a big jet banking hard after taking off. It’s crazy how that haunts me to this day.
I grew up in La grange and Hinsdale in the 1970s.
Thomas H, I was in 8th grade at school in Villa Park Il. In Gym class. We were outside and we could see the huge black smoke cloud. When I got home my mom had the news on and I saw the horrific sight on TV.
I lived about the same distance away and at age 10. I was also able to see the plume of smoke. I also remember my parents watching the wall to wall coverage on local tv.
I was 11. I lived on the Northwest side. Portage Park area. I remember this so vividly. As kids, our parents would take us down Irving Park Rd. to park and watch planes take off. That was what we did for fun in the 70's!
@@rush4ever I used to park on Irving Park with girls and watch the planes in the late 80’s-early 90’s.
13:13 the engine "initiated a detachment" has to be right up there with "rapid unplanned disassembly"
😂
I remember this so very well. I was fly back home from college. I had a layover in O’Hare Airport. My plane landed just after O’Hare reopened after this crash. I was able to see the crash site and the utter devastation. Latter I went to law school in Tulsa. One of my classmates had been an A&P mechanic at the AA maintenance plant and had work on the pylon and engine removal on many of AA’s DC 10s, including the one that crashed in Chicago. Had also has written several memos outlining the dangers of using the forklift method of engine removal. Copies of his memos ultimately ended up in the hands of the FAA and NTSB. It seems that AA failed to produce them for the FAA and the NTSB.
You did an excellent job describing the crash and how it occurred.
This is one of those plane crashes that sends chills down my spine
After all of those hours of flying with the damaged mount if it had only waited another five minutes to fail when the leading edge slats were retracted this flight would have been recoverable.
For me it's this one, PSA 182, and Western Airlines Fligh 2605 which crashed five months later than AA 191.
I was seated in the B section, seat 11. I saw the engine fly right by my window. I was killed when we hit that stupid trailer park. I'm still angry.
@@PhilMoskowitz Exactly AAron, so many innocent lives on the ground were lost in San Diego, nobody expects a plane to come raining down on their neighborhood due to some stupid single engine cessna flying into a jet liner. THat is far more tragic, as the loss of life on the ground equals that of those on the plane and the fact that the San Diego accident was totally avoidable, literally as the radar does not lie.. here in this case, the DC10 you have maintenance and human error involved.. and had the pilots gone to full power, they could have easily have landed that plane wihtout incidence.. it just does not make sense to me, if you lose an engine and have 2 more at your disposal, wouldn't your instinct tell you to "Floor it" Goto full power, you need that power, that lift, that airspeed.. why not go to full throttle, that would have saved the plane, the crew and everyone's life.. Why would the ATC not recommend them to go full power, come around and land??
I've sat in the cockpit of a Bangladesh Biman DC-10 because I knew the Captain. Watching the sunrise over the Himalayas - which was on the horizon - was a sight to see.
Biman was actually the last airline operating the type in passenger service before retiring it in 2014.
I heard the crash from home, about 3 miles away. The plane narrowly missed the majority of a mobile home park and many gasoline tanks. It was awful.
I will never forget waking up as a child, seeing that famous chilling photo of the aircraft with wing almost at right angles to the ground, in the morning papers. Decades later , I watched the Smithsonian Channel documentary on this accident. As always , you have provided a few more details; in this case, the nitty gritty of what went wrong with the "time-saving" maintenance procedure. After watching the TV documentary and this one, I was filled with further sadness for all who perished. The pilots did everything by the book, and yet it was ironically not appropriate for the circumstances. Truly and sadly, the Swiss Cheese model, fate, call it what you will, had it in for them.
It was the airlines attempt to cut costs with a not approved maintenance procedure which killed them. Simply. The pilots had no chance.
An old air industry wisdom is: If you think safety is expensive - try a crash.
RIP to the victims.
The captain switched with a friend as he had a family emergency or something. Or else he wouldn't have even been involved crazy
And according to mayday I think it was, his son thought his dad wasn't piloting originally, until the airline called him.
@@Rammstein0963. Yes this is accurate.
@@Rammstein0963. I was going to EmbryRiddle Aeronautical university in Prescott Arizona at the time. The Captain’s son was a good friend of mine. He was on his way home to Phoenix when he found out that his dad was flying AA191. He did not return to school after that while I was still there. His father and the crew followed the correct emergency procedure for an engine failure. They did pitch up to V2 airspeed as trained. But not knowing that the left slat had retracted because of the loss of hydraulics , that was too slow a speed for the left wing and it stalled creating the roll. They never had a chance unfortunately. RIP Captain Lux and to all of those aboard. 😔
Captain Walter Lux. A Flight Attendant I met in 2001 knew him and said that when they would get in the briefing room and Captain Lux was the assigned pilot, they were happy. Some pilots had a rather nasty reputation but Captain Lux was regarded as a top highly experienced professional.
I was in Chicago on that day, and had considered taking that flight on my return leg to San Francisco, via Los Angeles. I scheduled a later flight so that I could visit the Museum of Industry, on related business. On leaving the museum my cab driver said that traffic at the airport might be disrupted because of a plane crash. The flight home was unusual, with free drinks and a reduced cabin crew. The camera that allowed the passengers to observe the takeoff was turned off. This was probably done to keep us from seeing the wreakage. The flight was also an American Airlines DC10. This was my 2nd near miss; the first was in 1972 when a helicopter that was to pick me up for a training exercise crashed before it reached our pickup location. Food for thought.
You are a lucky person. I hope you never took life for granted, especially after those.
Nope nope nope, stay away from flying.
The Goodness of God towards you.
Two times lucky!
Saved by randomness, still air transportation is the safest.
I remember when this happened. I was a boy and could not sleep because the next day I was leaving on a long trip to Disneyland. I turned on the T.V and the crash was on the news it was 3.00 A.M and the least of names was rolling across the screen seemed to go on forever. Never forgot this
I had just arrived in NYC to attend my first comic con with my dad. This was all over the news. It was sad on so many levels.
At the time, I was a student in Wisconsin and was scheduled to fly to Europe out of O'Hare a week later. When I heard the news, I felt like I had taken a punch to the gut. I thought about all the passengers screaming as that DC 10 went down. Everyone I knew was shocked. You are right it was a terrible accident. To this day, I am still angry with AA for using a forklift to dismount a jet engine.
My god. The all must have been screaming so much. Once the plane was close to 90 degrees they had to know it was over. By the time they realized there’s no way they are going to survive who would have been over just seconds later. The only consolation is that it doesn’t seem as though there was any physical suffering.
I feel like a fool but as someone with an amateur understanding of flight, I always assumed that a plane was completely screwed following an engine detachment, primarily because of this very incident. I had no idea that a detachment is a recoverable scenario. I learned something new today so cheers!
Yup.. TransAir 671 had 2 engines completely detach and landed safely. Engine #3 broke off the aircraft due to a growing fatigue crack, as #3 was ripped off the wing, it impacted and took the #4 engine off with it. Miraculously landed. Very skilled pilots
@jshowa o Well actually if you paid attention to the video, then you would know that indeed, American 191 could have been recovered. The pilots just had no idea the aircraft was stalling.
@jshowa o Do you need the meaning of the word "recoverable" explaining to you?
@jshowa o and it is was also mentioned in video that the slats are not visible from the pilots p.o.v.
I flew to and from Chicago on a DC10 Summer of 1987 on AA and the return flight was delayed due to a hydraulics issue. We were still a bit scared as it was at night and the crew anticipated a hard landing. No problems upon landing but the plane seemed to take longer to stop to proceed off the runway. I also flew on a DC-10 from JFK to Bermuda (also AA) in 1988. No problems but we were not seasoned fliers at that time and felt a bit worried. Now decades later I criss cross the Atlantic often, except for 2020-2021. Over the years in Economy and Business class on B757's, B767's, B777-200, A330.
Hight Lift Designer - Great assessment but want to mention that this crash and subsequent analysis led to the addition of slat skew detection systems. The detachment of the engine led to air being spoiled over the wing and loss of lift in that area. The roll was not so much due to the stall speed but lack of roll authority to compensate for the loss of lift, asymmetric lift left to right. The stall speed was a factor but the aircraft could not recover from the combination of slat retraction and spoiled lift. The tools to study the loss of lift became more advanced in the coming years. 777 and 737NG added slat skew. Slat skew spoils the lift as one part of the slat raise above the wing and spoils the lift. The system must detect and shut down before the tip gets too high. The spoiled area spreads out in a triangle-shaped wedge front to aft.
Good video. Maybe I missed it in the video, but there were 2 other changes made in response to this accident. 1. The DC-10 slat actuators were redesigned to use mechanical locks rather than hydraulic pressure to keep the slats extended, and 2. American's pilot's engine out procedure was changed for them to climb out at V2 plus ten (or a higher speed if they were already at that higher speed). At least that's what I recall, and I could be wrong. That was a long time ago.
The FAA mandated that all actuators were to be mechanically locking, not just on the DC-10, after that accident.
There was another consequence of this accident: The Speed Command Computer of the DC-10 was modified - the reason was this: If the pilots of the accident flight would not have reduced their "too high speed" - the attained speed of 172 knots, down to the commanded V2 speed, the the left wing with the retracted slats would not have stalled and the aircraft would not have crashed. The pilots would have the chance to climb out and to check the situation (the third pilot/flight engineer going to the 1st-class passenger cabin having a look at the wing and reporting that the slats are retracted). Having a chance to perform a "no-slats landing". The normal take-off procedure of the DC.10 was climbing out on V2+10kts (all engines operating) and climbing out at V2 (one engine out). After this accident there was a bulletin to modify the Speed Command Computer (AT/SC Computer) so that the command to the flight director pitch bar on an engine fail situation was to keep V2+10 kts in case the speed attained was already V2+10 kts or higher. In the case of the accident climb-out V2 was 153 kts, V2+10 would have been 163 kts, this would have been above the stall speed of the left wing with its retracted slats. As another consequence of this accident there was also a modification to the DC-10 Slat mechanism: On loss of hydraulic pressure the slats were locked in position (extended if the loss of hydraulic pressure occured when the slats were in an extended position). From this state of mechanical locking it was only possible to move the slats when the hydraulic pressure could be restored.
One other remark: The FAA has grounded the DC-10 much longer than only to the time when it was discovered that the accident was caused by a maintenance issue rather than a design flaw. (Foul play by Boeing influence towards FAA was suspected to be the cause of that too long grounding.)
Great Info, I wonder though, after what happened at Sioux City, would they have bled out their hydraulics in another minute or two anyway. With asymmetric thrust, they might have been doomed regardless.
@@nsammons5292 You can not add the Sioux City accident into this case. Here in the case of the detached engine the hydraulic system number 1 was loosing its fluid. The systems numer 2 and number 3 were not loosing any fluid. In the Sioux City case all three hydraulic systems were severed and loosing the fluid. In the case here the airraft would be fully contollable with the asymmetric thrust having full contol through the rudder with systems #2 and #3
Was the speed reduction actually managed by automation? !
@@davidpowell3347 In the DC-10 the Take-off phase of flight in not done by autopilot. The speed control computers (AT/SC) command via the Flight-Director pitch bars that the pilot flies a pitch attitude that results in a speed of V2+10kts in a normal climb-out and V2 in an engine-out situation.
What a heartbreaking tragedy, I feel so much for the terror those on board must have felt, and for their loved ones. No detail is too small to be checked over and over, remember the O-ring failure that brought down the Space Shuttle?
Yea it is insane with flying how one little defect or problem can cause a catastrophic failure.
Yes; that was caused by ambient temperatures.
A couple engineers voiced concerns about the o ring at a meeting the night before but the corporate culture at NASA was so toxic. And as it turned out they weren't wrong to be concerned. Just that they were so sure the shuttle would blow up on the launch pad but it lasted longer and might have made it except for a gust of very strong wind that hit the shuttle and dislodged a piece of material that temporarily sealed the flame coming out.
It's crazy that they felt a forklift would be exact enough for this type of job. I've never worked on planes, but I drove a fork lift in my youth. They have a lot of play in them. The forks themselves are solid, but the hydraulics are extremely difficult to adjust by just fractions of an inch. Most don't have lateral movement either, meaning you have to drive it in perfect position left to right, front to back, & the only thing you control with the hydraulics is the height, which usually doesn't lift plumb.
This is what happens when MBAs take over operations not pilots, mechanics and engineers.
Imagine SEEING this crash right as you yourself are getting ready to board a flight, nobody would hold it against you if you never flew again...
There’s another comment above about a guy who dropped off his girlfriend to take that flight and then he stayed and watched the crash. Awful.
Back in the 1980s I met an old WWII pilot who had been taxiing to take off just as this happened. A friend of his, another WWII vet, turned his plane around and taxied back to the terminal and resigned. He said "I've been flying airplanes for 40 years. If an engine can just fall off an airplane then I'm done."
Wow!
I was a aviation mechanic at AA for 35 years. I removed and installed many pylons and engines on the DC10, many years after this accident. The problem was they were preloading the aft clevis with the install. Many ac at AA and other carriers were found with aft clevis stress cracks after the accident. We removed and installed these items every ac at their heavy C check at the time. Still when installing the pylon it was critical to not preload the aft clevis using a scale to prevent you from picking up more weight than the weight of the pylon with the crane.
Minor point I know but thanks for mentioning the flight engineer. The two documentaries I saw on this neglected him entirely - Air Crash Investigation and Seconds from Disaster, with the latter not even bothering to use a DC-10 simulator or anything similar. Instead, they used a Boeing 737 simulator
I was working nearby O'Hare at the time of this event, and followed the news everyday. Many in our office stopped work, and watched from our building at the smoke, and emergency equipment racing to the crash site.
The Chicago Tribune reported daily news of the NTSB findings. The chief of maint. who authorized the step saving procedure was due to testify 31 days after the accident. The day before his testimony he took his own life.
I Remember This Crash and The 2 Plane Crashes of The Canary Islands... Still Very Sad 😢 40+ Years Later 😞
I remember this accident. It was broadly covered in the news at the time. I've followed the story over the years and I have to say your video covers many, many aspects I had not seen before. Thank you.
I have flown on the DC10 for many years without any knowledge of crashes. From the DC 10, I flew from age 4 to 15 years of age visiting my mom in California back to my father in New York Rochester, and I've always enjoyed flying on that very large roomy Craft. I always thought it was a beautiful jet with a rear wing engine. I was always escorted by an American Airlines Stewardess from one flight to THE next in Chicago and I was always the first 1 on the plane. They would let me go into the cockpit. And look around and say hello to the pilots. They would give me my wings to clip onto my shirt. And made me feel really welcomed. It was such an awesome crew. My experience was good. Unfortunately, unfortunately, not for many others.
God, I remember this dreadful, sorrowful day while growing up in Chicago... May 25, 1979 is 'a day that will live in infamy' for many of us who experienced the feelings of shock, sorrow and anger while watching news reports of this crash in real time back then. Thank you for your fine video about this accident.
My dad worked as ground crew at the time. He wasn't there that day but one of his co-workers was, and remembered seeing the engine just "bounce" down the runway as the airplane took off. I'm glad I learned the details as to what happened afterward, I thought the detachment damage was so great that it knocked out enough systems to make the airplane uncontrollable.
I was a flight attendant for North West Orient airlines for 7 years. I remembered this accident as I always flew on the DC 10. I loved that airplane. The FAA grounded all DC10s. From that time forward the DC10 was known as the " Death Cruiser". Still I loved flying on it when it came back into service until it was retired from North West airlines.