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Chilling details of a Seattle flight revealed Cripes. Can you imagine this nightmare??
The 185 passengers on an American Airlines 757 en route from Seattle to New York had no way of knowing the serious trouble their jet was in last month when the pilots switched to backup battery power because of a problem that occurred soon after takeoff.
Those batteries supply power to the plane for only about 30 minutes. But nearly two hours later, with the jet in cruise flight over Michigan, the electrical systems in the cockpit and, then, the cabin began to fail because the batteries were drained.
Without power, the plane’s intercom went out and a flight attendant had to pass a note under the cockpit door to communicate with the crew.
As Flight 268 made an emergency landing at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, vital systems to control the jet were not working, including some wing flaps. When the jet touched down, the engine thrust reversers did not work to slow the Boeing 757-200 and it barreled down the runway, leaving a long trail of skid marks as the pilot pushed hard on the brakes to try to stop.
The jet did stop, finally, with all three main landing gear intentionally off the side of the pavement in the grass and the nose of the plane only 100 feet from the end of the blast pad pavement, which extends some 397 feet past the departure end of the runway.
This sounds more like pilot stupidity than pilot error.
In an interview with the pilot after the event, he provided these additional details. “My asshole bit a hole through my BVD’s, my uniform pants and the naugahyde seat only moments before I was able to stop the plane.”
God, even my cell phone has an indicator to tell me the battery is charging!
I’ll bet the passengers had more skid marks than the runway.
When you find details on what really happened, I’d like to read the review.
No pilot would continue past an appropriate airport on battery power alone. That would not be pilot error or pilot stupidity, that would be a fantasy of what a made up pilot would do.
How did the cabin electrics keep going past the 30 min battery life?
Wing Flaps and thrust reversers are normal equipment but not necessary equipment to land assuming a long enough runway which they had. Sounds like he landed long given the situation.
So many holes and inconsistencies, not even fun to read.
I had 3, no 4 fligt stange things happen to me.
I was test driving s custoners ride one day and I looked to the west and this plane came out of the over cast. Way long on the runway.
The pilot tried to touch and go, but he hit long and crashed. Ketchikan.
Look it up if you don’t belive me.
I was enrolled in a course on fuel injection in 1973. Flew down from Ketchikan to Portland Leaving the airport at Seattle. Main door gasket blew, O2 bags came down.
Loose stewardess hit the ceiling another time.
Wind Shear.
Alaska is a big place. Lots of problems.
All the guys I flew with back then are dead.
I remmber one time we flew over to Metlakala.
Me and my dog Dago.
We picked up a guy there after I did what I do.
We were back on the way to Ketchikan, and Dale, the pilot, said: Watch Dago.
He dived and Dago seemed to float over the television that the american/indian was going to go to the big town to fix.
We lived in an alley then.
People came by, with and without limbs.
It was the vietnam thing.
some guys had it all, some didn’t.
We loved them all.
They have hybrid jets, now?
here it is on the ntsb site:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20081007X03940&key
I get the impression that allot of things on the plane did not work correctly. Some of the systems showing “green” condition failed at the moment of activation. Furthermore, they could not shut down the engines. Really? They needed to use the fire system. Well, I feel safer now.
Are we there yet??
Duracell baby!
Coincidentally I just flew into Seattle too, and boy are my arms tired!
You should really worry when the flight attendants start collecting AA batteries from the passengers…
#4 – Special Ed – I’ll bet the passengers had more skid marks than the runway.
ROTFLMAO 😀
#8 (link)
Yeah, right from the horses mouth, so to speak. They flew for another hour and 40 minutes on batteries designed to last only 30 minutes? What kind of batteries did they think they had, those Energizer Bunny batteries? They could have easily made it to Denver. I wonder if AA execs urged them to keep on going. Pilots are under a lot of corporate bean-counter directives.
“Post incident investigation revealed a failure of the B1/B2 contacts in the K106 electrical relay.” – Ah, yet another Radio Shack relay bites the dust, eh?
Next time remind me not to fly American
What a way to ruin a legacy of air travel and customer service
Imagine if it had been one of those fly-by-wire planes…
The engines on a 757 are “fly-by-wire” Each engine has a PMA (permanent magnet alternator) to supply electricity to the EEC (electronic engine control) in case of loss of electrical power. I can’t believe those idiots continued flying! As far as engine shut down, the spar valves and the firewall shut off valves are all “powered closed”. You don’t want a loss of electrical power to shut off the fuel to the engines or feather the hydraulic pumps.
I just finished an AA flight yesterday where we took 10 hours to get to JFK from San Fransico. We left at 8:30 or so (scheduled 8:10), circled in the sky for two-plus hours due to weather at JFK, then landed at Wash. D.C. Dulles to refuel and sit on the ground for another couple of hours before flying into JFK just before 10.
I love reading the non-pilots view of aviation material. #16 Why worry about the pilots? I don’t understand.
I have a few buds over at AA and have discussed this incident with them. It is generating discussion over there. Apparently this was not a straight forward abnormal procedure covered in the books, but one that combined multiple systems and procedures.
The Captain is a long time 757 guy who knows more about its systems than anyone outside of Boeing, the FO is about as sharp as they come. With the limited and time critical nature of the info. they received, I am sure they made sound judgment calls. That is why they are paid the big bucks.
So sit back in the seat you paid 99$ fly cross country, complain you have to spend 2$ on a coke, ask why you can’t just fly through the thunderstorm to get there quicker, all the while not really worried about your safety.
My latest passenger favorite- flying over the Vegas airport, our destination, a passenger in the back started screaming that I was “missing the runway” and flying right past the airport, what was wrong!!! Scaring everyone.
Just getting in position to land, the airfield is landing to the west. Ooops.
I thought large jets flight crews are trained
to use the APU , not battery power in this
situation.
http://www.757.org.uk/systems/sys6.html
The mechanics voted themselves more and more wages & benefits, the airlines were forced to fire the mechanics in large numbers. Inspections got beefed up and when they found more things wrong with the aircraft there weren’t enough mechanics to fix them. Now it’s just a flying circus and the retired airline people have busted out pensions to show for decades of work. It’s going to get worse. Years back I suggested turning the airport into a morgue to process people faster. They owe hundreds of millions of dollars on the thing to support flying junk with junk airport bonds. Houses are getting foreclosed and the government wouldn’t think of closing the airport. It’s economically useless and full of government employees. Knowing how things work, they’ll propose expanding it to create more government jobs once Obama is chief of the tribe. The trains are running, so I expect we’ll see more hoboes riding the rails. It’s like Barack to the Future, is this 2008 or 1932? The idiots out my way are ripping the stone out of the hills with heavy equipment to give work to the union. This means more work for the other union guys building retaining walls to hold up the hills. It looks like lots of make work projects ahead and the fact that the government and banks are busted could make funding a challenge. If they had money they would pay off the airport. The new idea is to keep printing unlimited cash and if they give enough away things will improve. More bank failures are certain. The airlines have already failed, so it’s just going through the motions. The baby boom is a bust and you guys are just plain screwed. Now you will pin your hopes on Obama, so it’s just like pin the tail on the donkey. It’s a sham election, followed by a sham presidency and the world according to Warren Buffett. You know when Buffett and the unions are lined up together, you are in for trouble. They have some big plan, like the last big plan worked so well. The McCain deal is to send a message to the troops in the field. The message is screw you guys.
That must have been a hairy time for the pilots. This is when good training and a lot of experience comes in handy.
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#25, toc,
Must suck to be you. Happy November fourth.