TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT TECHNICAL SERVICES COMPANY, INC FEBRUARY 14, 2009

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NEWSLETTER

1020 YATES WAY, Ste 229 - SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA 94403 - 650.931.4326 - jim @tatsco.com

DITCHING . . . AN ALTERNATE MEANS OF COMPLIANCE TO THE LAW OF GRAVITY

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AIRCRAFT DITCHING (an unscheduled landing of a Landplane or Seaplane in a body of water - creeks, rivers, lakes, bays, shallow water or oceans {blue water}) began sometime shortly after the invention of the airplane. It became a popular event for Naval Aviators while they were developing the aircraft carrier and seaplane tender concepts before World War One (WWI). If you were screwing-up your approach to your aircraft carrier, they’d wave you off before you crashed on the flight deck (maybe you’ve seen a movie showing the LANDING SIGNAL OFFICER (LSO) diving into his “trampoline” just before the “landee” wiped out his signaling platform. Broken airplanes weren’t welcomed . . . even if it was only broken a little, such as your tail hook wouldn’t extend. All carrier guys went thru the ditching training pool during their pre-carrier qualification period. Another cause of carrier pilot ditching was the missing carrier syndrome. Somebody sank the son-of-a-gun while I was out sinking their ships! Your option - to bail out and hope somone (but not a Japanese attacker) noticed you on the way down, or to ditch along side a boat - or ship (there is a technical difference) and pray that they will stop what they are doing and pick you up! These problems were carried forward to military land plane operations early in the war. You may have flown your B-24 bomber all the way from Smokey Hill Army Airfield in Salina, Kansas to the UK, only to find it covered with low clouds and fog - but open water could be seen thru holes in the undercast (that is what you call overcast when you are flying over it). You could parachute, with only your life jacket if you landed in the water, or you could land in the water and board your luxurious raft with it’s fine cuisine of survival rations and gibson girl radio. Your arrival experience (the ditching described above) remained with you when, on the way back from a bombing raid with two engines out and three or four wounded crew members, you saw the beach along the English Channel. Knowing now that “land crashed airplanes” usually burn, you opt for the water the second time! (Google 1939 UK aircraft ditchings, and you’ll find an archaeological site that describes the findings of thousands of aircraft in the waters surrounding the UK!

THE FOLLOWING IS TO COMFORT OUR READERS THAT DITCHING IS NOT AN “AUTOMATIC DEATH” EVENT - IT HAS BEEN

GOING ON FOR OVER 75 YEARS . . .- NOR IS IT AN INDICTMENT OF ANY

AIRPLANE MODEL, CREW ACTION OR AIRLINES.

DITCHING IS LIKE STUFF, IT

HAPPENS!

NOTE RE THIS ISSUE . . . .When we began this issue things in Seattle were very quiet. Our comments to the FAA office in Renton, re our review of the B-2A USAF Accident Report (sent to us as a Christmas present by a NEWSLETTER reader) went unanswered, so we turned to the Aviation Event Du jour -the USAIRWAYS ditching in the Hudson. As we were wrapping up our research - there were some great stories in the first “century” of aviation - FAA-Renton announced the relaxation

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COMMERCIAL AIRLINER DITCHINGS IN THE POST WWII ERA . . . . The San Francisco Chronicle, 24 January issue, took umbrage to the A-320 ditching stories . . . . Danville pilot's Hudson River heroics aren’t unprecedented -- a Pan American STRATOCRUISER crew did it too, in the middle of the Pacific -- in 1956 (16 October) and followed with an interview of the purser, Pat Pimsner . . . . . The Captain of the ditched a/c, Dick Ogg, passed away in 1991. He was a nice guy. NOTE: I was a PAN AM Stratocuiser Flight Engineer based in Honolulu in 1956, and remember the drama as the story unfolded there. Former New York based PAN AM DC-6B Flight Engineer Leo Weston (now a retired FAA Executive) sent me the following e-mail last week.Pan American Stratocruiser Flight 943 winged smoothly through the night sky, confident in its aloneness, all but oblivious to the black Pacific four miles below. It was 3:20 a.m., and inside the cabin, each of the 31 passengers sought sleep according to his station-first-class passengers in berths, tourist passengers scrunched up in reclining seats. Suddenly a shrieking squeal drowned the silence, and the airplane swooped roughly. The passengers bolted awake. "Ladies and gentlemen," crackled the cabin loudspeaker, "this is Captain Ogg. We have an emergency. Our No.1 engine is uncontrolled. A ditching at sea is likely. We have a Coast Guard cutter nearby that is able to render assistance. There is no cause for alarm."

Quietly, two stewardesses and a purser went to work, pointed out the escape hatches, explained the ditching procedure (fasten safety belts securely, rest head on pillow on the knees, cross wrists behind legs, grasp each ankle from the front). Passengers discarded their shoes (the

women took off stockings so they would not slip if they had to walk on a wing), got rid of sharp objects (e.g., fountain pens, tie clasps), shouldered their way into life jackets. One woman tore the crucifix from her rosary, kept the beads.

In the cockpit, too, there was calm. Then six minutes after the trouble began, another engine-No. 4-choked to a stop. With both outboard engines out of commission, Captain Ogg knew for certain now that he could not make the 1,000 miles to San Francisco - that he would have to ditch. Rather than dump gas and risk

SOME INTERESTING DITCHED AIRCRAFT PHOTOS.

of the 2008 Fuel Tank Safety Amendments to the 14 CFR Part 25 Airworthiness Standards - (Amdt 25-125 which states, “Technology now provides a variety of commercially feasible methods to accomplish these vital safety objectives”). The “truth” as seen by the same folks that promulgated this Amendment says something else . . . .

“Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner cannot meet the Federal Aviation Administration’s current stringent standards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, and the agency now calls those requirements “impractical” and proposes to loosen them” (Seattle Times). As I said earlier . . . .LIKE STUFF, IT HAPPENS!

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a night landing, he decided to wait till daylight and let the plane exhaust its heavy fuel load. He so notified the Coast Guard weather-watch cutter, Pontchartrain, some comfortable ten miles to the west. Pontchartrain's skipper, Commander William K. Earle, radioed the best course (330°) for ditching into the running swell, and the time of sunrise (7:22 a.m.). Captain Ogg easily homed on the Pontchartrain, managed to hold his altitude at 2,000 ft. while he circled her.

During the long wait for daylight, he switched the seat-belt sign off, told his passengers to light their cigarettes, relax. The conditions for ditching, he assured them, were "ideal." The water temperature was 74°, the sea calm.

They waited in silence. Three passengers dozed. A stewardess jokingly offered to pass out the magazines. A passenger wanted to know when breakfast would be served. Everybody laughed.

Now it was daylight. At 8:04 a.m. Ogg announced: ten minutes. Then, one minute. The passengers braced. Ogg carefully aimed the big Boeing Stratocruiser for a strip of white fire-fighting foam that Pontchartrain had laid to aid the pilot's depth perception. He kissed the plane onto the hard waves, touching gently at first. Then it bounced hard, whipped around violently as an engine tore loose, snapped in two. Quickly the crew discharged and inflated the life rafts. The passengers waded cautiously through the cabin rubble, hopped into the rafts. Within ten minutes after the Stratocruiser struck water Pontchartrain's small boats had picked up all survivors-only five were slightly injured-and deposited them, snuggled into blankets, aboard the cutter. Eleven minutes later, what was left of the Stratocruiser disappeared in the foam.

Dick Ogg had some Guidance for preparing to ditch because another PAN AM Stratocruiser preceded his landing in the Pacific’s blue waters . . . . On 26 MARCH 1955 another SFO based aircraft ditched after departing Portland for Honolulu. The propellor on number three engine threw a blade, and the out of balance condition tore the engine from its mount. 2 crew and 2 passengers drowned -- 19 survived. The aft fuselage of that aircraft tore off and Ogg’s flight attendants knew to direct the passengers to the coach seats (front of the airplane). By now you may be

DITCHING CONFIGURATION - YOU DON’T WANT A DITCHING SWITCH - THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES IF IT MALFUNCTIONS HALF WAY TO HONOLULU - AND THE LANDING GEAR - EXTEND IT.

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asking yourself - okay Helms, you got another broken Stratocruiser story? Now that you asked - you betcha’ - two more.

We’ve been talking about ditchings, but there are forced landings on dry land as well. (I participated in the retrieval of the crew and passengers of a KLM DC-4 that made a dead stick midnight landing on the sand dunes 17 miles from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia on January 1, 1952. The only injury was a cut on the forehead of the Flight Engineer. After the accident and subsequent retrieval of the aircraft, it flew back to Holland. The story was covered in our November 1953 NEWSLETTER).

A CRASH IN THE JUNGLE - BRASILSeldom do engineers have the opportunity to compare land and sea accidents. The first PAN AM Stratocruiser accident was a thrown propellor blade -- followed by the engine -- but it happened over the Amazon jungle. NOTE: The blue line is the flight path of the Boeing. The black line is a 1963 flight in a factory owned Cessna 185 in 1963. Two of us were returning from solving another thrown propellor blade problem on “little airplanes”. An hour north of BRASILIA we began to say our prayers - the friggin’ trees were really tall!

29 April 1952 - Flight 202 originated at Buenos Aires, destination New York, with en route stops scheduled at Montevideo, Uruguay; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Port of Spain, Trinidad. The flight departed Buenos Aires at 18:52 UTC. After a scheduled stop at Montevideo the flight arrived at Rio de Janeiro at 01:05, April 29. The flight departed Rio de Janeiro at 02:43 for a direct off-airways flight to Port of Spain. At 06:16 the flight reported abeam of Barreiras, flying at 14,500 feet under VFR conditions and estimating abeam of Carolina, Brazil, at 07:45 UTC. This was the last known message from the flight. The aircraft was later found to have crashed in dense jungle.

PROBABLE CAUSE: "The separation of the no.2 engine and propeller from the aircraft due to highly

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unbalanced forces, followed by uncontrollability and disintegration of the aircraft for reasons undetermined."

NORTHWEST AIRLINES provided the precursor to the US AIRWAYS A-320 in the Hudson by diching a Stratocruiser in the Puget Sound shortly after take-off from SEATAC (SEATAC has bird problems, but the birds in this case were flying the airplane - like the Boeing 307 Stratoliner crew that ditched there in 2003). The 307 was rinsed and returned to service. 4 passengers and 1 crew menber drowned on the NWA aircraft - 38 pax and 5 crew survived. The four Boeing Flight test guys on the 307 which ran out of fuel, were wet but uninjured.

JAL 2 . . . .To continue our tale. My favorite ditching was the almost new JAL DC8-62 (long range - 707 size fuselage) on November 22, 1968.The aircraftwas piloted by Captain Kohei Asoh . . . . it wasscheduled to land at San Francisco InternationalAirportbutduetoheavyfogandotherfactors,Asohmistakenly landed the plane in the waters ofSanFrancisco Bay, two and a half miles short of therunway.Noneofthe96passengersor11crewwerekilled orinjured in themishap, and the plane waseventually recovered and refurbished for service.Asoh had served as a flight instructor in theImperial Japanese Navy during the Second WorldWar and was a 15­year veteran of JAL. He had

almost9,800hoursofflightexperienceatthe timeoftheaccident.Thistooisanotherstory,andifyouknowMarkGoodrichaskhimtotellittoyou.

The "Asoh defense". . . . In his1988bookThe Abilene Paradox, authorJerryHarvey claimed thatAsoh, when asked howhe had managed to land the aircraft in the bay, replied "Asoh fuck up."Harveytermedthisfrankacceptanceofblamethe"Asohdefense",andthestoryandtermhavebeentakenupbyanumberofothermanagementtheorists.

RICHARDWILLIAMS­OURSOURCEOFFAAHAPPENINGS­REMEMBERSTHEJALACCIDENT....I was nearing the end of my "between tours" year and was On Leave for the Holidays in SF.The first thing we heard was that some incompetent Jxx Pilot had parked his airliner in the Bay.Then we heard that it was a perfect Water Landing several miles from the Southeast end of runway .28.I drove down Bayshore (101) and could see the plane in the water.The next morning the Chronicle had really good pictures of passengers standing on the wingsand getting into all kinds of small boats. Most of them didn't even get their feet wet !!A day or two later, barges with cranes showed up and lifted the airplane onto another barge.

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AN AIRPLANE WITH NO (FUNCTIONING) ENGINES IS A GLIDER - The US AIRWAYS A-320 wasn’t the largest commercial jet transport glider either. That honor goes to an Air Canada Boeing 767 - on 24 July 1983 on a flight from Montreal to Edmonton. (I’ll let Wikipedia tell the story).

At 41,000 feet, over Red Lake, Ontario, the aircraft's cockpit warning system sounded, indicating a fuel pressure problem on the aircraft's left side. Assuming that a fuel pump had failed, the pilots turned it off, as gravity would still feed fuel to the aircraft's two engines. The aircraft's computer indicated that there was still sufficient fuel for the flight, but as subsequently realized, the calculation was based on incorrect settings. A few moments later, a second fuel pressure alarm sounded, prompting the pilots to divert to Winnipeg. Within seconds, the left engine failed and they began preparing for a single-engine landing.

As they communicated their intentions to controllers in Winnipeg and tried to restart the left engine, the cockpit warning system sounded again, this time with a long "bong" that no one present could recall having heard before.This was the "all engines out" sound, an event that had never been simulated during training. Seconds later, most of the instrument panels in the cockpit went blank as the right-side engine also stopped and the 767 lost all power.

The 767 was one of the first airliners to include an Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS), a system that required the electricity generated by the aircraft's jet engines in order to operate. With both engines stopped, the system went dead, leaving only a few basic battery-powered emergency flight instruments. While these provided basic but sufficient information with which to land the aircraft, a vertical speed indicator – which would indicate the rate at which the aircraft was sinking and therefore how far it could glide unpowered – was not among them.

In airliners the size of the 767, the engines also supply power for the hydraulic systems without which the aircraft cannot be controlled. Such aircraft are therefore required to accommodate this kind of power failure. As with the 767, this is usually achieved through the automated deployment of a ram air turbine, a generator driven by a small propeller, which in turn is driven by the forward motion of the aircraft. As the Gimli pilots were to experience on their landing approach, a decrease in this forward motion means a decrease in the power available to control the aircraft.

In line with their planned diversion to Winnipeg, the pilots were already descending through 8500 m (28,000 feet) when the second of their two engines stopped. They immediately searched their emergency checklist for the section on flying the aircraft with both engines stopped, only to find that no such section existed. Captain Pearson, however, was an experienced glider pilot, which gave him familiarity with some flying techniques almost never used by commercial pilots. In order to have the maximum range and therefore the largest choice of possible landing site, he needed to fly the 767 at a speed known as the "best glide ratio speed". Making his best guess as to this speed for the 767, he flew the aircraft at 220 knots (407 km/h). First Officer Maurice Quintal began making calculations to see if they could reach Winnipeg. He used the altitude from one of the mechanical backup instruments, while the distance traveled was supplied by the air traffic controllers in Winnipeg, measuring the distance the aircraft's echo moved on their radar screens. The aircraft had lost 5,000 ft in 10 nautical miles (1.5 km in 18½ km), giving a glide ratio of approximately 12:1. The controllers and Quintal both calculated that Flight 143 would not make it to Winnipeg.

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At this point, Quintal proposed his former airforce base at Gimli as a landing site. Unknown to him, however, the base had become a dragstrip and had decommissioned one of its runways. As a result of the runway's conversion to use as a dragstrip, the runway had been converted into two lanes with a guard rail running down the middle of it. Furthermore, a "Family Day" was underway at the dragstrip that particular day and the area around the decommissioned runway was covered with cars and campers. The decommissioned runway itself was being used to stage a race.

Without power, the pilots had to try lowering the aircraft's main landing gear via a gravity drop, but, due to the airflow, the nose wheel failed to lock into position. The decreasing forward motion of the aircraft also reduced the effectiveness of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), making the aircraft increasingly difficult to control because less power was generated. As the runway drew nearer, it became apparent that the aircraft was too high, prompting Pearson to execute a maneuver known as a forward slip to increase their drag and reduce their altitude. At the time Pearson executed the slip, the aircraft was flying over a golf course, and one passenger reportedly said "Christ, I can almost see what clubs they're using!".[5] A forward slip is commonly used with gliders and light aircraft to descend more quickly.

As soon as the wheels touched the runway, Pearson "stood on the brakes", blowing out two of the aircraft's tires. The unlocked nose wheel collapsed and was forced back into its housing, causing the aircraft's nose to scrape along the ground. The plane slammed into a guard rail which made the plane lose a bit more speed to stop it from flying off the runway. NOTE: Emergency systems are often like bombs and bullets. You never know i f they work until you use them.

None of the 61 passengers were seriously hurt during the landing. A minor fire in the nose area was soon put out by racers and course workers armed with fire extinguishers. As the aircraft's nose had collapsed onto the ground, its tail was elevated and there were some minor injuries when passengers exited the aircraft via the rear slides. These were tended by a doctor who had been about to take off in an aircraft on Gimli's remaining runway. Ironically, the mechanics sent out to Gimli from Winnipeg Airport were left stranded when their van ran out of fuel.Another was sent to pick them up.

IF YOU LOOK FURTHER . . . . You’ll find other articles about dead stick landings (at least two with CFM-56 engine powered 737s -- one in the water and one on a levee - it was later flown away).

LANDING ON A HIGHWAY . . . . Some wags sugggested that the US AIRWAYS A-320 could have landed on a highway . . . I offer the following - also from Wikipedia! A less successful crash landing involved Southern Airways Flight 242 on April 4, 1977. The DC-9 lost both of its engines due to hail and heavy rain in a thunderstorm and, unable to glide to an airport, made a forced landing on a highway near New Hope, Georgia, United States. The plane made a hard landing and was still carrying a large amount of fuel, so it burst into flames, killing the majority of the passengers and several people on the ground.

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NEXT ISSUE In the next NEWSLETTER we will do a quick review of Basic Composite Airplane construction - the good and the bad features. This will enable you to better understand the debate surrounding the 787 airplane and what the FAA East Coast, The USAF, the US Navy, and some Foreign Civil Aviation Authorities have to say. At the moment it appears the only proponents appear to be located in the Seattle area. We, and others, have gone on record suggesting scrapping the 787 program - UNHEARD OF . . . . The Boeing 2707 Supersonic Jet Transport forward fuselage (Section 41) mockup is in the Hiller Aircraft Museum about 3 miles from where I’m sitting. That program was SCRAPPED. More on scrapped major aircraft programs in the next issue!

EPILOGUE - The US Airways crew did what their years of experience trained them to do, or at least what to think about - How do I get this mother down safely - the “where” to put it is part of the “equation”. The media, hungry for some good news perhaps, after two years of political “doom and gloom”, didn’t take time to research the history of “landings in the water” or “bird strike” using one of their sophisticated search engines or a professional accident data base company like John Eakin’s Air Data Research Company, His clients report news the “old fashioned way” - ACCURATELY!

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