United flight 232- Case study

United flight 232, a scheduled DC-10 flight from Denver to Philadelphia via Chicago. The captain being Alfred Clair Haynes, an experienced pilot with 7,000 hours of flight time in DC-10. First officer was William Roy Records having accumulated 655 hours on the DC-10. Whilst on the Denver- Chicago leg when the plane was cruising at FL370 (37,000 ft) .

1 hour into the flight when it was turning right at FL370, The tail engine manufactured by General Electrics CF6-6 faced a exploded due to a failure in the fan disk. A fan disk is like the center part of the engine.

The ruptured fan disk caused the engine to disintegrate , this lead to small parts of the engine pierce some parts of tail and this was a disaster as all 3 hydraulic lines in DC-10 were located in the tail. The horizontal stabilizer was also damaged.

Now, due to a complete loss of hydraulics the control column (where the yoke or steering wheel) is located was completely inoperative. There was a sharp right bank and the nose was dropping the pilots realized the plane could go down in a vertical dive the pilots decided to idle power in the left engine and increase power in the right engine. Luckily the plane leveled out. After declaring an emergency the pilots decided to land at Sioux City, while landing there was yet another confusion, if the landing gear be dropped or no, the DC-10 was known to have a mechanism that due to gravity the landing gears would drop or there was a lever present too. The pilots used the lever.

After dumping excess fuel the plane went for a high speed approach at Sioux City during the final descent the plane became almost uncontrollable and the sink rate increased drastically. The right wing hit the runway first which lead in fuel being spread on the runway which ignited immediately, the left wing was intact. The tail part separated and the aircraft bounced several times. The fuselage was broken into different parts on the runway. The fire services reacted immediately saving many lives.

Out of the 286 people on board , 111 people perished. Still the pilots were hailed as heroes. The DC-10 was damage beyond repair.

Unfortunately the day United Airlines were celebrating Children's Day and many children were there onboard as flight tickets cost not more than a penny :(

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How the aircraft was divided.

The aircraft involved in accident DC-10 registered as N1819U.