Posted on 07/10/2006 11:53:58 AM PDT by oxcart
The collision of two NWA planes last year at Minneapolis/St. Paul International is still under investigation so NWA and the NTSB wouldn't comment for this story. In fact, investigators didn't want us to get our hands on the tape until now.
Experts who have viewed the tape wonder why the planes didn't explode on impact.
May 10, 2005, an airport security camera is rolling as Northwest flight 1849 pushes back from the gate. Onboard 38 passengers, five crew members and thousands of gallons of fuel for the flight to San Antonio.
At the same time, another Northwest plane is just arriving from Columbus. That plane's crew is just discovering their hydraulic system has failed. They cannot steer or stop. The out of control DC-9 with 99 people aboard slams into the larger airbus pushing it 60 feet.
"Once we got close to the terminal, everybody just popped the belt to get off the plane the next thing we know we hit the larger plane," one passenger said.
The collision is violent. The wing of the airbus rips open the cockpit of the smaller plane, jet fuel pours out.
Brian LaCroix of Allina Medical is part of a team of Twin Cities emergency personnel who have created a plan to deal with this type of crash.
"It had to be horrifying to be in that cockpit," said Brian LaCroix.
A single spark could have created a fireball.
"It is an ignition source away from a catastrophe, just an amazing catastrophe," LaCroix said. "Within the first several minutes we had 22 ambulances en route."
The tape shows ramp workers rushing to help passengers and crews escape. The back stairs of the DC-9 are quickly lowered and passengers are led to safety. On the airbus, the slide is deployed and passengers and crew jump out.
"There were firefighters and paramedics at the base of the slide," he said.
The result was the best possible outcome in a crash which, by many accounts, could have been the deadliest Minnesota has ever seen.
The DC-9 had reported hydraulic problems in flight, but landed without a problem and began taxiing just fine. It was only later on the ground that the control systems failed; it would have been impossible for the Captain to avoid a crash. The NTSB is still investigating the case.
Why? Because there was an indicator light on in the cockpit?
The aircraft flew normally to it's destination, do you really think the pilots weren't doing everything they could to determine if there was a problem other than a faulty sensor?
On approach, the landing gear came down and locked, the flight controls worked normally keeping them on course for the runway, upon touch down the reversers and brakes worked normally and they were able to steer and brake multiple times on their trip to the gate where the brakes worked yet again.
There is absolutely nothing in that report that tells me that the real time analysis of the crew was faulty.
I'm sure that as soon as the brakes failed, removing all question about an actual fault they would have agreed with you.
Very high pucker value...
I'm on a Mac and it aint never gonna have Active-X or IE. There's no good reason to make this website browser/OS specific. Kinda defeats the whole purpose.
Unless you're msnbc, but I think MS pull out of that one.
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