Remembering United Flight 232

On the afternoon of July 19^th, 1989, 285 passengers boarded United Airlines flight 232 at Denver’s Stapleton International airport, heading for Chicago. It was “Children’s Day” at United. Under this promotional travel deal, kids could fly for only $.01 with the purchase of an adult ticket. Unbeknownst to everyone, flight 232 was to be anything but an ordinary flight.

Commanding the Chicago-bound aircraft was Captain Al Haynes (left), accompanied by First Officer Bill Records, and Flight Engineer Dudley Dvorak. Eight flight attendants brought the total passengers and crew aboard the DC-10 aircraft to 296. Because of the “Children’s Day” deal, 52 of the passengers were children (an unusually high number), many traveling alone.

The flight departed Denver at 2:09 PM, and began its journey to Chicago. The weather was beautiful, the skies clear, and it was shaping up to be an uneventful flight. (A United DC-10 much like that of flight 232, is pictured at right.)

However, at 3:16 PM, shortly after crossing the border into Iowa, all hell broke loose. At a cruising altitude of 37,000 ft, the aircraft was violently rocked by an explosion from the rear of the plane. After shutting down the failed #2 engine (located above the tail of the plane) which had virtually disintegrated, Records and Haynes soon discovered that the hydraulic pressure was quickly dropping on all three redundant hydraulic control systems. All three systems rapidly lost all pressure, leaving the pilots with no way to steer the massive aircraft. With no control over the flaps, ailerons, rudder, and elevators, the only way the cockpit crew was able to gain any control over the aircraft at all was to use a method of steering called "differential thrust", wherein by throttling up on one engine and down on the other they could gradually change the direction of the aircraft, and by accelerating or decelerating they could cause the plane to ascend or descend.

Dennis Fitch, a DC-10 flight instructor for United, was heading home aboard flight 232 as a passenger, and upon realizing the peril the flight was in, quickly offered his assistance to the flight crew, and took command of the throttles. The plane was able to make wide right turns, but could not very easily go left. Additionally, the craft began a series of ascents and descents, known as phugoid cycles, much like a roller-coaster. The flight instructor had to proactively accelerate and decelerate the engines thrust in attempts to counteract this phenomenon.

For nearly 45 minutes the crew maneuvered the plane in a series of wide right-turns using the engines as a crude form of steering. Emergency crews were dispatched to Sioux City’s Gateway airport, a small regional airport nearby, as the plane’s crew did their best to maneuver the craft for an approach, all the while dumping fuel to lighten the craft and provide less combustibility in the event of a fire upon landing.

Flight attendants instructed passengers on the safety protocols, which included how to brace for impact, and, most chillingly, United protocol at the time called for parents to place so-called “lap children” on the floor of the cabin below their feet.

Amazingly, by 4:00 PM, the captain and his crew had successfully executed enough right-hand turns to put the craft in line for a final approach to runway 22 at Sioux Gateway. That particular runway had been closed for some time, and was about 1/3 shorter than the 9,000 ft runway they had hoped for. The crew could not slow the plane without causing it to fall from the sky, so with an open field at the end of the runway, 22 would have to do.

In the final seconds of the approach, UA-232 began an uncontrollable heave to the right, and at 4:00 PM and 16 seconds, the flight touched down at the start of the runway, right-wing first, sheering off the wing and the nose of the craft, releasing fuel and causing the craft to slide off-course to a fiery stop, finally coming to rest in the middle of a cornfield. Rescue personnel rushed to the scene, transporting injured passengers to local area hospitals.

Below is a video of the crash, synced to the last seconds of voices on the CVR:

Amazingly, thanks to the heroism of those commanding the craft, and the quick response of the area rescue personnel, 189 people were saved from the doomed flight. 111 people died, mostly due to the multiple impacts of the fuselage as it came to rest, and smoke inhalation. Of the 52 children aboard (four of whom were lap children), 11, including one lap-child, lost their lives.

“Luck”? “Providence”?

It was only through an extraordinary confluence of events that nearly 2/3 of the passengers survived what was, at the time, the 7^th worst airplane crash in United States’ history.

Some call it luck, some call it “God”, but it is undeniable that so many things fell into place at just the right time, that it increased the survival odds exponentially.

Said Captain Haynes in a later interview, “I'm not a very religious individual, but so many things fell into place for us that a lot of people do credit it to luck, and some would call it God's will…some would call it something else. . . so whatever anybody wants to call it is fine, that's why I call it luck. I don't want to step on anybody's toes.”

Some of the factors he attributes to the relative success of the crash-landing include:

• The incident occurred during daylight hours
• The crash happened during a shift-change at both major medical centers in Sioux City, so there were two full staffs of doctors and nurses on-hand to care for the injured.
• Sioux Gateway airport is also the home of the Iowa Air National Guard, who was on base that day, lending an additional 285 trained personnel to lead the rescue effort. That particular day, a Wednesday, just happened to be the one day of the week the base was fully staffed.
• Dennis Fitch, a United DC-10 instructor deadheading home aboard the flight, was able to take some of the load off the pilots by controlling the engine thrusters while they manned other controlls during the crisis.
• In 1987, only two years earlier, Sioux City had staged a disaster drill to plan what to do in the event a widebody aircraft were to make an emergency crash-landing at Sioux Gateway airport. Because of that drill, conducted on Runway 22, the very same retired runway that flight 232 would later crash-land on, Sioux City’s emergency crews were at a level of readiness unmatched by other airport towns at the time.
• The weather also "just happened to be" perfect. Cpt. Haynes has said numerous times that any turbulence whatsoever would have caused them to completely lose control of the flight, which would surely have led to a catastrophic loss of the entire flight. This was actually somewhat uncharacteristic of a late summer afternoon in Northwest Iowa. Exactly one year later in 1990, when they visited Sioux City for the first anniversary memorial of the flight, Sioux Gateway airport was covered in black thunderstorms.
  

Later, when the flight data from Flight 232 was loaded into a simulator, according to avweb, “not one of the 57 crews they tested in the simulator could control the airplane all the way to the ground.”

Final Thoughts:

July 19, 2009, just 13 days from now, marks the 20^th anniversary of this spectacularly frightening ordeal that gave the sleepy town of Sioux City its fifteen minutes of fame. In 11 days, just 48 hrs shy of that 20th anniversary, when I touch down at Sioux Gateway airport to attend my best friend’s wedding, you can bet your life that I’ll hold the memories of the 111 people who died at that airport in my heart, and say a prayer for their families, who no-doubt will also be thinking about the loved-ones they lost so many years ago. I'm proud to have even the most tangential relationship with the siouxland community, having spent four years in the area going to school. In fact, if any readers know of any jobs in Northwest Iowa, throw me an email, as I would really love to beat the pavement out of California the first chance I get.

Web Resources:
Interview with Al Haynes
Wikipedia
Aviation Safety network
Airdisaster.com
Hayes' Speech at Edward's AFB, May 1991

Additional Web Videos Of Interest:

Air Investigations: United Airlines Flight 232 (45 Mins)



55 minute Documentary: Leaving The Earth (About Denny Fitch. VERY moving)



History Channel: Disaster - The Unflyable Plane
Pt 1:


Pt 2:


Pt 3: