United Airlines Flight 173

Infobox Airliner accident|name=United Airlines Flight 173
Date=December 28, 1978
Type=Pilot error, CRM
Site=Portland, Oregon
Fatalities=10
Injuries=24
Aircraft Type=McDonnell-Douglas DC-8-61
Operator=United Airlines
Tail Number=N8082U
Passengers=181
Crew=8
Survivors = 179

United Airlines Flight 173, registration N8082U [cite web |url=http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19781228-1&lang=en |title=Accident description |publisher=Aviation Safety Network |accessdate=2006-08-16] , was a Douglas DC-8-61 en route from Stapleton International Airport in Denver to Portland International Airport on December 28, 1978. When the landing gear was lowered, only two of the green landing gear indicator lights came on. The plane circled in the vicinity of Portland while the crew investigated the problem. After about one hour the plane ran out of fuel and crashed in a sparsely populated area near 158th and East Burnside Street, killing 10 and seriously injuring 24 of the 189 on board.

Crash investigation and report

The NTSB investigation revealed that when the landing gear was lowered, a loud thump was heard. That unusual sound was accompanied by abnormal vibration and an abnormal yaw of the aircraft. The right main landing gear retract cylinder assembly had failed, due to corrosion, and that allowed the right gear to free fall. Although the RMG was down and locked, the rapid and abnormal free fall damaged the microswitch, which completed the circuit to the cockpit green light, which tells the pilots that gear is down and locked. It was those unusual indicators (loud noise, vibration, yaw and no green light) which led the captain to abort the landing, so that they would have time to diagnose the problem and prepare the passengers for an emergency landing. While the decision to abort the landing was correct, the accident occurred because the flight crew became so absorbed with diagnosing the problem that they failed to calculate a time when they must be landing, to avoid fuel starvation.

"The Safety Board believes that this accident exemplifies a recurring problem --a breakdown in cockpit management and teamwork during a situation involving malfunctions of aircraft systems in flight....Therefore, the Safety Board can only conclude that the flightcrew failed to relate the fuel remaining and the rate of fuel flow to the time and distance from the airport, because their attention was directed almost entirely toward diagnosing the landing gear problem." [http://amelia.db.erau.edu/reports/ntsb/aar/AAR79-07.pdf NTSB Report (PDF)] ]

The NTSB determined the following probable cause:

"The failure of the captain to monitor properly the aircraft's fuel state and to properly respond to the low fuel state and the crewmember's advisories regarding fuel state. This resulted in fuel exhaustion to all engines. His inattention resulted from preoccupation with a landing gear malfunction and preparations for a possible landing emergency."

The NTSB also determined the following contributing factor:

"The failure of the other two flight crewmembers either to fully comprehend the criticality of the fuel state or to successfully communicate their concern to the captain."

Aftermath

As a result of this accident United Airlines instituted the industry's first Crew Resource Management/Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) program for pilots in 1980. The CRM program proved to be so successful that it is now used throughout the world.

Other aircraft accidents involving faulty landing gear indicator lights were Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, which crashed while circling around the airport at Miami, on December 29, 1972, and SAS Flight 993, on January 13, 1969, which crashed into the ocean during an approach to LAX.

The Eastern crew became preoccupied with the nose gear indicator light problem and accidentally disconnected the autopilot, causing the aircraft to make a slow descent and crash into the Everglades. Further investigation revealed that the nose gear was down and locked. It was the same for the SAS flight, as the green light for the nose gear failed to illuminate, after the landing gear was lowered. The SAS cockpit crew became so occupied with attempting to diagnose the lack of a nose gear green light, that they allowed their rate of descent to increase, until that DC-8-62 crashed into the ocean, well short of the runway.

Another aircraft with the FAA registration N8082U crashed on July 272007, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A home-built P-51A with the identical registration suffered a fatal accident while landing at the EAA AirVenture following a flight demonstration. [ [http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20070801X01080&key=1 CHI07FA243A ] ]

ee also

* Lists of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
* Air safety
* Crew Resource Management

References

External links

* [http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19781228-1 Aviation Safety Network for United 173]
* [http://www.planecrashinfo.com/1978/1978-76.htm Accident details] at [http://www.planecrashinfo.com/ planecrashinfo.com]
* [http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?regsearch=N8082U Photos of N8082U] at [http://www.airliners.net Airliners.net]
* [http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/ua173/photo.shtml Photos of Accident site] at [http://www.airdisaster.com AirDisaster.com]