Plane’s engine damaged

Press, 22 July 1989, Page 10

Plane’s engine damaged

NZPA-Reuter Sioux City lowa Failure of the rear engine may have caused Thursday’s crash of a United Airlines DC-10 in which 110 people died and 183 survived, United States Government safety investigators said yesterday. The investigators said Captain Al Haynes, the pilot of Flight 232, struggled desperately for 42 minutes to keep his plane in the air after the rear engine suddenly lost power.

Survivors said Haynes, who lived through the crash landing at Sioux City airport, calmly warned passengers just before impact that the landing might be a little rougher than expected. "Our pilot was a hero,” said one survivor, Mr John Transue, aged 40. Mr James Burnett, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference that Captain Haynes radioed he had lost power in the rear engine and reported losing his hydraulic controls one minute later. Four minutes later he radioed that he had lost all control.

Mr Burnett said the crew was

later able to regain some control before the plane crash-landed and flipped end over end. The fan in the No. 2 engine mounted in the tail cone of the jumbo jet was missing, he said. The fan helps create jet engine thrust.

Residents of a small town about 120kms from the crash site reported finding what appeared to be part of the tail assembly in a cornfield. United put the number of survivors at 183. An airline spokesman, briefing reporters at the company’s headquarters near Chicago, Illinois, refused to speculate on the cause of the crash, but said, “We feel confident this airplane, like all of our airplanes, has been properly maintained.”

He said the age of the plane — 15 years — is typical of DC-10s in service today. In Sioux City safety investigators and the police continued to pick apart what was left of Flight 232. A physician who was one of the first on the scene said he was surprised to find so many survivors. “It was surprisingly calm,” said Dr David Greco, head of emergency services at Marion Health

Centre in Sioux City. Describing the damage, he said, “First class was devastated and so was the rear of the aircraft. Seats in rows nine through 19, next to the wing structure, were largely intact.” • More plane crashes are being caused by mechanical failure “Flight International” magazine reported yesterday.

Of the 26 fatal accidents in the first six months of 1989, nine involved mechanical failure and six involved bad weather, it said. Pilot error was a significant factor in 14. “The mechanical failure figure is higher than usual,” it added in a review of half-year figures over the past 10 years. The magazine said that 1989 had so far been a bad year for airline safety — 606 people had died. The figures do not take account of Thursday’s United Airlines DC-10 crash in Sioux City in which 110 people died.

Flight International said 1985 was the worst half-year of the decade with 913 deaths in 21 accidents compared with the average of 439 people killed in 17 accidents.