"Oh, it's a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it looks like a big Tylenol."
Posted on 12/22/2007 4:22:51 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
TAIPEI — A China Airlines passenger jet earlier this month turned back mid-flight shortly after take-off from Taiwan after a cabin door malfunction at an altitude of 3,000 meters, local media reported Friday. Passengers on Flight CI008 panicked after a "swishing" sound emanated from the slightly ajar door, whose handle had malfunctioned, prompting the pilots to jettison fuel and turn back to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the reports said.
Nobody was hurt, and the Los Angeles-bound Boeing 747-400 landed without incident, which occurred Dec 8, said Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration. The problem emerged five minutes into the flight as passengers and cabin crew became alarmed at what appeared to be an unlocked lever on the cabin door and sounds of escaping air pressure.
The CAA's initial findings point to possibilities that include the door being affected by jarring or banging of the jet in the process of taking off, and ground crew failing to fully secure the door. A door suddenly opening in a pressurized cabin at a high altitude could cause passengers to get sucked out of the cabin and the jet to crash.
“That happens occasionally - DC 10 cargo doors, eg.”
I’ve seen baggage doors on a private jet fly open on takeoff. Oops!
Why is Boeing using Chinese-made parts for its doors?
The China Airlines lounge in Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport serves both CA and United.
"Oh, it's a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it looks like a big Tylenol."
Wow... seems like a good argument for doing the cargo doors with the same "open-inward" design as the passenger cabin. Are the cargo doors open-outward or something? Or did the cargo door fail despite being open-inward?
The DC 10 door openened outward, so that a standard aircraft shipping contaner could fit through it.
The designed worked, until metal fatigue caught up with it.
Three of them went down do to door failures, that I heard of.
Dang... I would have grounded them after two and redone it, standard container or not... but I'm an engineer by nature, not an airline manager or bean-counter.
Actually, it caused MCD-D to go bankrupt, and sell out to Boeing.
Don'tcha just hate it when that happens... but seriously, thanks for the history! Fascinating.
The door in question was the rear belly door. The locking handle (lever) for that door was not on the door but forward of it and that made for a long linkage mechanism. The door lifted upwards and was motor controlled. When closing the door you had to hold the switch an extra second for it to fully seat.
Here, IMO, was the problem: If the door was not fully seated then the locking mechanism (mortise and tenon type) would not be lined up and would bind without engaging. That could occur because of the length of the linkage between the locking handle and the locking mechanism. The linkage could bend enough to allow the handle to fall into place without the locking mechanism engaging.
The fix, IIRC, was to add a flag to indicate the locking mechanism had engaged.
I was an aircraft loader (we locked the doors) from '69 to '74 at JFK and so had the opportunity to play with the door to see what the problem might be.
yep, that airplane.
Wasted fuel...
Are you smoking dope?
I’m sorry. I was getting another bourbon. Could you repeat that?
Outdated knowledge. CAL used to be below average both because of personel and traing. They had some incidents in the early 90's as recall and called in consultants from the US and I think some US pilots. So they are as safe as anyone, except maybe Quantas, and the servic is superb.
Boeing does many things right, but they still do a few things wrong.
Not always, re UAL 811.
A later problem with the latch mechanism of the cargo doors was traced to shorted wires which caused the latch motor (DC) to reverse itself. The difficulty in actually solving that problem was that the loss of the door took all the evidence with it. IIRC they finally fished a door off the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea which provided the clues to solve it.
Umm, lemme check.... nope. Why do you ask? Because I expressed interest in how an engineering design flaw might have the huge and unintended consequence of bringing down a major manufacturer? As an engineer for the past 35 years or so (when I wasn't doing System Admin), I'm acutely aware of how dramatically errors in products can affect the companies that make them. I just wasn't aware of that one.
Or were you asking because you want a hit?
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