avia.wikisort.org - Event

Search / Calendar

National Airlines Flight 27 was a scheduled passenger flight between Miami, Florida and San Francisco, California with intermediate stops at New Orleans, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; and Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States.

National Airlines Flight 27
N60NA, the aircraft involved in the accident.
Accident
DateNovember 3, 1973
SummaryUncontained engine failure
Siteen route over New Mexico
Aircraft
Aircraft typeMcDonnell Douglas DC-10-10
Aircraft nameBarbara[1][2]
OperatorNational Airlines (NA)
RegistrationN60NA
Flight originMiami International Airport
1st stopoverNew Orleans International Airport
2nd stopoverHouston Intercontinental Airport
3rd stopoverMcCarran International Airport
DestinationSan Francisco International Airport
Occupants128
Passengers116
Crew12
Fatalities1
Injuries24
Survivors127

On November 3, 1973, the aircraft servicing the flight, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 with the tail number N60NA, experienced an uncontained engine failure, causing significant damage to the aircraft. The aircraft later managed to make a safe emergency landing at the Albuquerque International Sunport. One passenger was ejected from the aircraft at cruising altitude, in addition to minor injuries sustained by 24 passengers.


Flight crew


The crew consisted of Captain William R. Broocke, aged 54, employed by National Airlines since 1946, who had qualified to fly the DC-10 in 1972 and accumulated 21,853 flight hours in his career with 801 hours on the DC-10; First Officer Edward H. Saunders, aged 33, employed by National Airlines since 1965, with 7,086 flight hours of which 445 hours were on the DC-10; and Flight Engineer Golden W. Hanks, aged 55, employed by National Airlines since 1950, with 17,814 flight hours of which 1,252 flight hours were on the DC-10.


Incident


On November 3rd, 1973, Flight 27 took off from Houston, Texas bound for Las Vegas International Airport. The aircraft leveled off at 39,000 feet (12,000 m) with an indicated airspeed of about 300 knots (350 mph; 560 km/h).

At about 16:40 MST, while the aircraft was at cruising altitude 65 miles (56 nmi; 105 km) southwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the No. 3 (starboard) engine fan assembly disintegrated in an uncontained catastrophic failure. Smoke was reported to fill the cabin before the fragments of the fan assembly penetrated the fuselage, the No's. 1 and 2 engine nacelles, and the right wing at high speeds, causing a cabin window to dislodge and eject the adjacent passenger from the aircraft. The resultant damage caused decompression of the aircraft cabin and the loss of certain electrical and hydraulic systems.[3]

The flight crew initiated an emergency descent, and the aircraft landed safely at Albuquerque International Sunport 19 minutes after the engine failed. 115 passengers and 12 crew members exited the aircraft by using the evacuation slides. The plane was repaired and was later flown by Pan Am (as Clipper Meteor).[citation needed]


Casualties


Flight 27 after the emergency landing at the Sunport
Flight 27 after the emergency landing at the Sunport

Of the 116 passengers onboard, 24 people were treated by medical personnel from nearby Kirtland Air Force Base for smoke inhalation, ear problems, and minor abrasions.

One passenger[4] was partially blown into the opening made by the failed cabin window, after it too was struck by engine fragments. He was temporarily retained in that position by his seatbelt. "Efforts to pull the passenger back into the airplane by another passenger were unsuccessful, and the occupant of seat 17H was sucked entirely through the cabin window."[5]

The New Mexico State Police and local organizations searched extensively for the missing passenger who was blown out of the window. Computer analysis was made of the possible falling trajectories, which narrowed the search pattern. However, the search effort was unsuccessful. A ranch hand later found a pair of sunglasses and a tobacco pipe while working on a ranch near Alamo, New Mexico. He turned over the items to state police, where the family of the missing passenger identified them as belonging to him.

In 1975, two years after the incident, a construction crew laying the tracks for the north arm of the Very Large Array radio telescope on the Plains of San Augustin, came upon his skeletal remains. The remains took another year for the medical investigator in Albuquerque to identify.[6]


Investigation


Damage to the aircraft caused by the engine failure
Damage to the aircraft caused by the engine failure
N60NA's No.3 engine after the failure, showing the remains of the failed fan assembly
N60NA's No.3 engine after the failure, showing the remains of the failed fan assembly
The reconstructed fan assembly that caused the engine failure
The reconstructed fan assembly that caused the engine failure

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause of this accident was the disintegration of the No. 3 engine fan assembly as a result of an interaction between the fan blade tips and the fan case. According to the NTSB, "the precise reason or reasons for the acceleration and the onset of the destructive vibration could not be determined conclusively", but enough was learned to prevent the occurrence of similar events. The speed of the engine at the time of the accident caused a resonance wave to occur in the fan assembly when the tips of the fan blades began to make contact with the surrounding shroud. The engine was designed to have a rearward blade retaining force of 18,000 pounds (8,200 kg) to prevent the blades from moving forward in their mountings slots and subsequently departing from the fan disk. The rearward force was not enough. As a result of this accident, GE re-designed the engine so that the blade retaining capability was increased to 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg), and that change was incorporated into all engines already in service.[3]

In addition to this, it was found that between August 8 and September 12, 1973, there had been 15 problems reported about the third engine.[7] The engine had been taken off the aircraft for repairs, and between the time it was replaced and the accident, a further 26 faults had been reported by the pilots. It was found that the bolts that had held the front covering in place, which had failed in the accident, were outside the tolerances laid down. An engineering dispatch was sent out to inspect these engines, and six more discrepancies were found in the National Airlines fleet alone. Therefore, this dispatch was made compulsory for all early DC-10s in order to prevent the issue from occurring again.[7]

The NTSB expressed concern about the cockpit crew conducting an unauthorized experiment on the auto-throttle system. They had been wondering where the system took its engine power readings from and to see if it was the N1 tachometer readout "the flight engineer pulled the three N1 tachometers [circuit breakers]" and then adjusted the autothrottle setting. The cockpit voice recorder proved that the engines altered their power setting when requested, proving to the crew that the system was powered from another source. The crew then manually reset the throttles to the normal cruising power before the flight engineer had closed the tachometer circuit breakers. It was considered whether the crew had accidentally over-speeded the engine when setting power without the tachometers, but there was insufficient evidence to deliver a certain verdict. Nonetheless, "regardless of the cause of the high fan speed at the time of the fan failure, the Safety Board is concerned that the flight crew was, in effect, performing an untested failure analysis on this system. This type of experimentation, without the benefit of training or specific guidelines, should never be performed during passenger flight operations."[3]


See also



References


  1. Stephen Barlay. Aircrash Detective. Coronet. 1975. ISBN 0-340-19890-7
  2. Macarthur Job. Air Disaster Volume 1. Aerospace Publications Pty Ltd. 1994. ISBN 1-875671-11-0
  3. "NTSB Report AAR75-02" (PDF). NTSB. pp. 6, 7, 8, 20, 35, 36.
  4. "Featured Maps: Decompression Defenestration (3 November 2010)". Retrieved 2010-11-21.
  5. Mondout, Patrick. "Curious Crew Nearly Crashes DC-10". Archived from the original on 2011-04-08. Retrieved 2010-11-21.
  6. Harden, Paul (2010-06-05). "Aircraft Down". El Defensor Chieftain. Archived from the original on 2020-08-15. Retrieved 2018-10-24.
  7. Godson, John (1975). The rise and fall of the DC-10. D. McKay Co. p. 188. ISBN 0679505288. OCLC 1245951.



На других языках


- [en] National Airlines Flight 27

[it] Volo National Airlines 27

Il volo National Airlines 27 era un volo passeggeri di linea tra Miami e San Francisco con scali intermedi a New Orleans, Houston e Las Vegas, operato da un Douglas DC-10-10 (N60NA).

[ru] Происшествие с DC-10 над Нью-Мексико

Происшествие с DC-10 над Сокорро — авиационное происшествие, произошедшее 3 ноября 1973 года. Авиалайнер McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 авиакомпании National Airlinesruen выполнял плановый внутренний рейс NA27 по маршруту Майами—Новый Орлеан—Хьюстон—Лас-Вегас—Сан-Франциско, но через 2 часа после вылета из Хьюстона во время пролёта над Сокорро у него отказал и разрушился двигатель №3 (правый)[1]; его осколки сильно повредили фюзеляж, правое крыло и оба остальных двигателя самолёта, что привело к разгерметизации, отказу ряда систем управления[1][2] и гибели 1 пассажира (его выбросило через образовавшуюся в фюзеляже дыру)[1][3][4][2]. Экипаж успешно посадил повреждённый лайнер в аэропорту Альбукеркеruen. Из находившихся на его борту 128 человек (116 пассажиров и 12 членов экипажа) погиб 1, ещё 24 получили ранения различной степени тяжести[5].



Текст в блоке "Читать" взят с сайта "Википедия" и доступен по лицензии Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike; в отдельных случаях могут действовать дополнительные условия.

Другой контент может иметь иную лицензию. Перед использованием материалов сайта WikiSort.org внимательно изучите правила лицензирования конкретных элементов наполнения сайта.

2019-2025
WikiSort.org - проект по пересортировке и дополнению контента Википедии