Encounter 28 · 28 of 42 · 19 July 1989
No hydraulics
On 19 July 1989 a DC-10 lost all three hydraulic systems over Iowa. The crew flew the airplane with engines. The book did not contain this failure.
Sioux Gateway Airport, Iowa
A stranger needs to know why three hydraulic systems can all die at once. On a DC-10 they ran through the tail. An uncontained failure there could, and this time did, cut all three. After that, the wheel in the cockpit still looked like a wheel. It was no longer connected to the airplane.
Fitch came up from the cabin. The four of them used differential thrust: louder on one side, quieter on the other. That was the motion they had left. Sioux Gateway was the airport they could still point at, more or less.
What they had
- Two remaining engines
- A fourth pilot in the jump seat
- CRM as a practice
- A fire department that was already rolling
The airplane cartwheeled on landing. One hundred and eleven people died. One hundred and eighty-five did not. Those numbers belong after the flight, not in the entrance.
1989
The cockpit
No hydraulics. No page in the book. Engines as rudder. A fire department already rolling.
Later
The lectures
crew resource management, not heroicsAl Haynes, afterward. The NTSB report is the record of the disk, the lines, the thrust, and the toll. 111 deaths are not spent as a training film.
A mixed ending is not a parable. Play, if the word is used, is the remaining motion in a machine. It is not a game.
What do you practice for the failure that is not in the book?
Private. No one else will see it.