Airliner on Dike, Revisited

Palmpilot

Palmpilot

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Some of us are old enough to recall a 737 that made a very successful forced landing on a dike many years ago, due to a dual flameout. I just watched a good documentary on it, as part of the Air Disasters series. I was surprised that it was possible to fly the plane back out again after replacing one of the engines.

The subsequent investigation discovered that the flameouts were caused by a combination of heavy rain and hail when the thrust was reduced for descent, and that this problem wasn't discovered during certification testing because all of the precipitation-resistance tests had been done at cruise thrust. When the thrust was reduced to something like 35%, that's when the problem was found to be reproducible. This resulted in design changes and fleet retrofits to prevent future problems in this scenario.

The documentary is episode 11 of season 3 (entitled Nowhere to Land), and can be viewed on the Smithsonian Channel web site, using one of various video subscriptions to unlock the episode.

https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/details/series/air-disasters/season-3
 
Palmpilot said:
Some of us are old enough to recall a 737 that made a very successful forced landing on a dike many years ago, due to a dual flameout. I just watched a good documentary on it, as part of the Air Disasters series. I was surprised that it was possible to fly the plane back out again after replacing one of the engines.

The subsequent investigation discovered that the flameouts were caused by a combination of heavy rain and hail when the thrust was reduced for descent, and that this problem wasn't discovered during certification testing because all of the precipitation-resistance tests had been done at cruise thrust. When the thrust was reduced to something like 35%, that's when the problem was found to be reproducible. This resulted in design changes and fleet retrofits to prevent future problems in this scenario.

The documentary is episode 11 of season 3 (entitled Nowhere to Land), and can be viewed on the Smithsonian Channel web site, using one of various video subscriptions to unlock the episode.

https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/details/series/air-disasters/season-3
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I saw that recently on TV. Don’t remember the channel. The series is called Mayday something or other. It’ll roll around again. If that would have happened years later in the age of cell phone and the internet he would be another household name like Sully.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110
 
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luvflyin said:
I saw that recently on TV. Don’t remember the channel. The series is called Mayday something or other. It’ll roll around again. If that would have happened years later in the age of cell phone and the internet he would be another household name like Sully.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110
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The series has been broadcast under various titles, depending on the channel, such as "Mayday," "Mayday: Air Disaster," and "Air Disasters." This Wikipedia article has a table of the various series and episode names, as well as varying episode numbering. I am putting this to good use in figuring out which episodes I have seen and which I haven't on the various streaming services that I have been trying out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes#Alternate_titles

It's currently being called "Mayday: Air Disaster" on The Weather Channel, and "Air Disasters" on Smithsonian Channel. The latter has nearly the entire list on their standalone app and their Web site (linked in my previous post), omitting only season one.
 
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Came here expecting some type of joke, left disappointed.
 
Pretty heroic effort by the two pilots.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Those are two great shows mentioned here I’ve watched everyone of both..
 
Somehow season 3 is missing from Hulu. They’ve got seasons 2 and 4-15. I wonder how that happens.
 
NoHeat said:
Somehow season 3 is missing from Hulu. They’ve got seasons 2 and 4-15. I wonder how that happens.
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The YouTube TV streaming service is missing seasons 1, 5, 6, and 7.
 
Was that the B-737-300 that Texas Air Corp received from Boeing. Flew for a while, and subleased it to TACA. The airplane returned to Texas Air corp and flew at Continental for a number of years after that incident. Just a piece of trivia. So if you flew on a Continental B-373-300, it just might have been THAT aircraft..................
I have no idea where it is today. Probably in the desert someplace.
 
Oldmanb777 said:
Was that the B-737-300 that Texas Air Corp received from Boeing. Flew for a while, and subleased it to TACA. The airplane returned to Texas Air corp and flew at Continental for a number of years after that incident. Just a piece of trivia. So if you flew on a Continental B-373-300, it just might have been THAT aircraft..................
I have no idea where it is today. Probably in the desert someplace.
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Yup

wikipedia said:
After its return to service, the plane was flown by TACA until March 1989 when it was acquired by Aviateca. The aircraft was then acquired by America West Airlines as N319AW in April 1991, then later Morris Air in January 1993. The aircraft was eventually acquired by Southwest Airlines in January 1995 first as N764MA then registered to N697SW in March 1995.[5] It continued service for Southwest until December 2, 2016, when it was retired and placed into storage at Pinal Airpark.
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Now that's a successful off airport emergency landing!

On May 24, 1988, the Boeing 737-300 lost power in both engines, but its pilots made a successful deadstick landing on a grass levee adjacent to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility, with no one aboard sustaining more than minor injuries, and with only minor damage to the aircraft. After engine replacement, the aircraft was able to take off from a road which had previously been an aircraft runway at Michoud. The aircraft was subsequently repaired and returned to service.
 
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