Posted on 04/19/2018 11:05:50 AM PDT by CedarDave
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Many were horrified on Tuesday upon learning an Albuquerque woman was killed after being partially pulled out of a plane when a nearby window was smashed by debris from an exploding engine.
Two words: extremely rare, said Alan Diehl, a former air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Air Force, of incidents involving passengers being pulled from planes in flight.
But on Nov. 3, 1973, a similar scenario unfolded on a flight over southwest New Mexico heading from Houston to Las Vegas, Nev.
Then, a Texas man died after he was pulled entirely from the plane when an engine on a National Airlines DC-10 flight blew up. G.F. Gardner, 47, of Beaumont, Texas, was pulled from the plane at 40,000 feet over an area near Magdalena.
His skeletal remains were found two years later during construction of the Very Large Array radio telescope near Socorro.
That engine literally fell apart, passenger David Drucker told the Journal in a Nov. 5, 1973, article.
The plane made an emergency landing at the Albuquerque airport, and 24 of the 127 surviving passengers and crew members were treated for smoke inhalation, ear problems and minor abrasions, according to the 1975 accident report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Good idea to buckle up, then.
So is once in 45 years closer to “rare” or closer to “frequent”?
ABQ woman killed when plane engine explodes midflight
Nerves of Steel (Tammie Jo Shults story)
Family starts official trust in Riordans name
NM list PING!
I may not PING for all New Mexico articles. To see New Mexico articles by topic click here: New Mexico Topics
To see NM articles by keyword, click here: New Mexico Keywords
To see the NM Message Page, click here: New Mexico Messages
(The NM list is available on my FR homepage for FR member use; its use in the News Forum should not be for trivial or inconsequential posts. Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
(For ABQ Journal articles requiring a subscription, scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the article for free after answering a question or watching a short video commercial.)
Once every 45 years sounds pretty rare to me.
Pretty rapid decompression but once it’s equalized there is no problem walking near it. Would be windy, loud and stuff blowing around - just keep the O2 mask on.
yes, using the word “But” as though it undermines the preceding statement of rarity looks weird.
Cue the golden harp.
—and , IIRC, a passenger was blown out of a British Comet in the early days of jet passenger aircraft-—
You need only go back to 1990, British Airways Flight 5390
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOcm6E10anI
In this accident, the cockpit window blew out due to faulty installation and the pilot’s upper body was sucked out of the plane, the only thing that saved him was getting his feet caught up in the control yoke (which put the plane into a dive). Amazingly he survived and was back at work 5 months later.
WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!!!
The venturi effect of air rushing past that small opening at 400mph would definitely create a continuous suction. How much? Certainly enough to suck a piece of paper out the window, but would it be enough to continue sucking a person out? I don’t know.
I remember that story of the accident in NM.
The way I remembered it the mans remains were never found.
Glad to hear he was eventually found.
Quick thinking [seat-belted] passengers managed to grab a flight attendant on her way up and out, as I recall.
Yeah, I think that's when engineers figured out that maybe airplanes shouldn't have right-angle openings and stress points, but rather round/oval ones like the ones designed for ships and subs.
wasn’t there a Myth Busters episode that covered this topic?
“WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!!!”
That would only help if the pot metal or plastic seats stay bolted down.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.