Posted on 08/16/2017 7:05:02 PM PDT by RckyRaCoCo
Wednesday, August 16, 2017 marks 30 years since the Flight 255 disaster in Romulus. Northwest Airlines Flight 255, headed for Phoenix, crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metro Airport.
The plane was just clearing the runway at 8:46 p.m. when it tilted slightly. The left wing clipped a light pole, and the damaged airliner sheared the top off a rental car building. The plane then crashed onto Middlebelt Road, just north of Wick Road.
The crash killed 156 people. All crew members were killed, and only one passenger survived -- a 4-year-old girl named Cecelia Cichan. Two motorists on Middlebelt were also killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at fox2detroit.com ...
Hard to believe they forgot to set their flaps for takeoff.
In both accidents, somehow the circuit breaker that protects the automated preflight warning system did not allow power to flow to that system. This system would have caught the error. The question in both accidents was whether the breaker was defective, or was it disabled intentionally.
The pilot was very experienced with 30 years of service and no black marks.
The Southern Mississippi Tennis team missed this flight because one of their members was held up and late to the airport so the rest just waited on him and chose to go out together on the next flight. The manifest at first reported them as on the flight and corrected it when they were found in the airport terminal alive and waiting on the next flight. My partner’s son was one of the men and he was notified of his demise and minutes later got a call from his son. Terrifying day to say the least.
I remember this because (in part) it occurred in the days before CNN became fake news. When news of the crash began moving on the wires, CNN simply tossed coverage to its affiliates in Detroit, WDIV and WXYZ. The local stations knew the area and the authorities. They did a great job. CNN chipped in with a few details from Washington and Phoenix.
CNN once did real journalism. Hard to believe.
Good God.
My parents, my sister and myself were living in southern California at the time.
I remember my Aunt, who lived in Detroit for many years, sent us some Detroit newspapers with headlines and front page stories about this calamity.
About a year ago or so, I remember seeing the lone survivor being interviewed on the news.....the 4 year old girl (at the time). She is now an adult woman, and she lost her parents and brother in the tragedy.
HE paid a price.
GM apparently lost quite a few.
I think they instituted some protocol to split up “team” travel to minimize future damage.
Sometimes routine is taken for granted even with the most experienced. A simple checklist done 1000 times was forgotten along with a system failure of an alarm for the flaps.
NO. Once they hit V1 which is the speed that you must continue as there will not be enough runway to make an emergency stop, they were doomed.
My father was a police officer in the Detroit area at that time. He was called to this plane crash. I remember speaking with him when he got home after being at the crash site for many hours. It was probably the first time I have ever seen my dad cry. He was devastated. To this day he has not told me all of the details of that horrible crash.
At the time, GM had a major proving ground near Phoenix and often had a dozen or more people on the Sunday evening plane to get to work Monday morning. The proving ground director, his wife, and two kids (friends of mine) were on the flight.
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