Hey, MzeroA nation, Jason here, bringing you a new series.
Actually, all throughout this year, we're going to be doing
more series-based content.
And welcome into the first part of that.
7700, of course our emergency transponder squawk code.
All this month, our webinars, our podcasts,
and we're back to doing podcasts, by the way,
links to those in the description below as well.
All our content has been based on this idea of in-flight emergencies that
unfortunately in some cases lead to accidents.
Today, we're going to be diving into United Flight 173,
and I'll be taking you through this accident that
really should have never been an accident in the first place.
The premise and the theme that I want you to take away from this
is that even the professionals make mistakes.
We have a very experienced crew in this case
and yet they still are going to run out of fuel in VFR conditions.
We'll talk about that in a second.
United Flight 173 is actually where CRM,
Crew Resource Management actually came from.
Up until this point, this was back with that culture of
"I'm the captain and what I say goes."
There wasn't too much working together as a team in the cockpit like we're,
I'll say, still aspiring towards here today.
The FAA started to realize that more accidents
we’re being caused by pilot error rather than mechanical error.
So, they devised this idea.
Listen, we have this CRM in the military here.
We need this over in civilian aviation, and United Flight 173 was one
of the final straws to get CRM implemented in our training.
So, let's start with the end in mind.
When the FAA and the NTSB showed up to the wreckage of United Flight 173,
they asked one simple question.
How does an airplane run out of fuel in VFR conditions in sight of the airport?
Knowing that question,
let's try to put ourselves in the shoes of the pilots that day.
There are three members of our United crew,
Captain Malburn McBroom.
He's a World War II veteran,
27-year United captain, 27,000 flight hours.
That's the kind of person I want to be my flight instructor, right,
like a World War II veteran, 27,000 flight hours,
yet this is the exact person that our accident really surrounds
to run out of fuel in VFR conditions.
Our first officer is First Officer Roderick Beebe,
13 years with United, 5,500 flight hours.
Forrest Mendenhall is our flight engineer, 11 years with United, 3,300 flight hours,
a lot of experience.
Thirty thousand plus hours sitting in this cockpit
and we're going to run out of fuel in VFR conditions in sight of the airport.
Let's watch the simulation here together
and I'll narrate it as we see how it unfolds.
So, our flight departs New York's JFK Airport
with a quick stop over in Denver before continuing on to Portland, Oregon.
Now, it was in Denver that some passengers get on,
some passengers get off, and we take on fuel.
We take on 46,000 pounds of the required 32,000 pounds.
Now, while this doesn't sound like a big deal,
we fly 172s, right, this is just enough fuel to
be legal in this type of McDonnell Douglas aircraft at the time.
Just enough fuel to be legal and still meet
the United requirements here.
We're coming into Portland, we break through this little wispy layer,
we lower our flaps, we lower our landing gear,
and it's about this time we're met with this loud bang type noise.
No one likes loud noises in airplanes, right?
So, they put down the landing gear, they hear this loud bang noise.
You and I can see from the outside their landing gear is down, locked and straight.
In fact, it actually was, yet when you look inside,
they didn't get any in-transit lights
and the majority of their lights just remained red,
not giving them a positive indication.
What had actually happened is they had lost hydraulic pressure.
Hydraulic pressure works to bring the landing gear up,
as well as to bring the landing gear down along with gravity.
Losing that hydraulic pressure caused 250 knots
and gravity to literally rip the landing gear down into place.
We can see this here, but they have no idea
if their landing gear is down at this point.
So, they enter into the call approach and approach vectors them to like
this triangular-shaped holding pattern, and it's there they continue to hold
while the captain sends the flight engineer back into the cabin
because on the McDonnell Douglas aircraft this time,
there's a little indicator tab that pops up on the wing roots
above each main wheel.
And if that pops up, that tells you that particular main is down,
locked and straight.
Look at our simulation and kind of see where that would be.
He checked and both those indicator tabs were up,
meaning, at least the left and right mains were down, locked and straight.
The captain now reaches out to the flight attendant
and tries to get the cabin ready here.
"Okay, what would you do?
Have you got any suggestions about when to brace?
You want to do it over the PA?"
Talking to the flight attendant.
The flight attendant says, "I got to be honest with you.
I've never had on this. This is my first emergency."
She's explaining here.
"As of now, hold it."
Remember, we got just enough fuel to be legal.
And the first officer and the flight engineer know and understand that,
and that conversation is going to come up here.
I'm sure the first officer is just thinking out loud when he says,
"How much fuel do we have?"
Flight engineer comes back and says, “Five thousand, 5,000 pounds of fuel."
This is like warning lights on at this point.
This is low fuel.
Captain says, "Give us a current car on a weight figure."
"About another 15 minutes."
"Fifteen minutes?" says the flight engineer.
Wait, I'll explain all this here in just a second now.
"Yeah. Give us 3 or 4,000 pounds on top of zero fuel weight here."
I'll explain this in a second.
Flight engineer says, "Not enough.
Fifteen minutes is going to run us really low on fuel here."
Let me just pause this here so you understand what this is saying now.
What the captain is saying,
"Hey, flight engineer, I know you said there's 5,000 pounds of fuel in there."
And by the way, in this aircraft,
5,000 pounds of fuel is like warning lights on.
Picture your car, it no longer tells you 30 miles 'til empty.
It just says, "Low.
You need to get to a gas station soon. This is extremely low on fuel."
What the captain is now saying here to the flight engineer, he's going,
"Listen. I know you say there's 5,000 there,
but trust me, give it 3 or 4,000 extra pound.
We're good. Don't you worry about it."
He's making up imaginary fuel.
Now, mind you, the flight engineer, the flight engineer was known as
the plumber of the aircraft.
There were so many different fuel tanks and fuel chambers
and there's a very complex fuel system.
No one knew the fuel situation better than that flight engineer
because he was constantly moving fuel wherever it needed to be to keep that
airplane flying with cross-feeds and pumps and everything else.
The flight engineer knew the true fuel status.
He said it was 5,000.
The captain won't hear it,
"Don't worry about it. We've got this. We're fine."
Let's continue with our simulation now.
So, after this conversation, we see Portland here.
You think, "Well, we have to land now."
However, that's not the case here.
The captain comes on back and lets everybody know
it's going to be just a little bit longer as the cabin continues to get ready.
"Just take another walk through the cabin. Make sure everyone's fine.
Let them know another 10 minutes or so,"
the captain says as they turn away from the airport.
Flight engineer is speaking out loud,
"We've got 3,000 in the fuel and that's it."
He gets ignored.
"Okay, on touchdown.
If the gear folds or something really jumps the track,
get those boost pumps off so that you might even get the valves open here."
He's worried about a post-crash fire.
He doesn't have enough fuel on board to even start a fire in this case.
But you look and here's Portland.
We got to land this time.
"There's one check we missed," says the captain.
"What's that?"
"The landing gear warning horn. Let's test the breaker.
Let's go ahead and let's pull the throttles back to idle
the flaps past 35 to test."
"Hey, pull that breaker and reset it."
He's obsessed with this landing gear issue,
but now it will get his attention.
First officer, "We're going to lose an engine."
"Why?" says the captain.
"We're losing an engine."
"Why?" says the captain.
"Fuel."
Now, we finally have his attention here.
"Open up the cross-feeds," the captain said.
Flight engineer says, "I'm showing fumes."
The captain says, "I'm showing 1,000 pounds are better.
I don't think it's in there."
It just flamed out
as they now make a desperate turn towards the Portland Airport
hoping to be with impartial power glide distance.
Flight engineer, "We're going to lose engine number three in a minute too.
Captain, we've got 1,000 pounds. We have to."
First officer, "We had 5,000, buddy, but we lost it."
"Do we have fuel pressure? All cross-feeds open."
The captain, "Hey, reset that circuit breaker real quick
and see if we get gear lights."
All the way into this descent
obsessed with this landing gear issue.
As United Flight 173 lands eight miles short of Portland International
into a Portland suburb, all three wheels, down, locked and straight.
I have some photos here to share with you of that.
You can see the crash.
There were some fatalities.
There were certainly more survivors than fatalities,
thankfully, in this case here.
When we say Portland suburb, we literally mean Portland suburb,
if you can see this here.
There was no post-crash fire.
Can you see the airplane in that photo?
Let me zoom in a little bit so you can see it here.
There was no post-crash fire from the airplane at least.
The only post-crash issue was an electrical fire,
as you can see the tail kind of grabbed the electrical lines there causing a fire.
When we say in a Portland suburb, we literally mean in a Portland suburb.
So now, you are the FAA, you're the NTSB.
You show up in the suburbs of Portland
and what's the first question you ask yourself?
"How does an airplane run out of fuel
in VFR conditions in sight of the airport?"
I mean, think about it.
You post in the comments, too.
I'd love to read your responses here.
Some ideas that jump into my mind, we forgot to fly the airplane.
We became obsessed with these other outside issues.
Let me show you the chain of events that I came up with here real quick.
How about the first one?
Just enough fuel for the trip.
Again, it's hard to calculate and fathom how much fuel this aircraft takes.
We're talking pounds and everything else, but to relate it to what we do,
is literally they took on just enough fuel to be legal,
plus United had an extra 20 minutes on theirs,
what they wanted.
Just enough fuel to be legal.
And the captain survived.
He later said, "Listen, we talked about the fuel,
but it was kind of just that's what we did."
Obviously, fly more fuel is expensive because you burn more fuel.
It's more weight.
It was just the economics of it at the time.
It doesn't happen as much, much anymore.
We're much more careful with our fuel burn,
but that was just the economics of it at the time.
That was, "I'm the captain.
What I say goes. This is the fuel I'm taking on here."
What's the second in our chain of events?
The landing gear issue.
And I call it the landing gear issue because the flight engineer went back
and double-checked the little indicators and he said,
"I can tell the mains are down, locked and straight."
At the time, the nose was much more difficult to inspect.
It required removing inspection panels to actually look down and see if it was down,
locked and straight.
But we had all the indications.
There's a pretty good chance the landing gear is down.
They just held out there a little bit too long before bringing it on in.
What about our third link in the chain of events?
The captain's failure to see beyond it.
He became obsessed with this landing gear issue,
trying every little thing, forgetting about the impending fuel issue.
That event number four in our chain of events,
the crew failed to share it.
You could say, "Jason, they tried their best. They thought out loud."
"Hey, much fuel do we have?"
And the captain heard them,
but then came up with other arbitrary things to say
and they just didn't share it enough until the faithful words,
"We're going to lose an engine."
And the captain just says, "Why?"
"We're losing an engine."
"Why?" the captain still says,
not fully understanding the circumstance, just trying to troubleshoot
and work through a landing gear issue.
How does an airplane run out of fuel in VFR conditions in sight of the airport?
Well, they simply just stopped flying the airplane,
if you want my professional opinion.
This accident, by the way,
it changed the way airlines hired and trained.
Gone were the days of "I'm this macho poster-boy type pilot."
Think back like the Tenerife accident and let's start incorporating CRM
and working together as a team and as a crew.
So, I know we were speaking about flying big heavy airplanes,
but I hope you see how this relates to us in general aviation.
Leave me a comment down below on your thoughts.
What can you learn from this?
How can you apply this to general aviation?
How can you utilize this in your own CRM as well?
This is the first in our multi-part series of the 7700 series.
I hope you'll like us on Facebook.
Subscribe on YouTube as well
so you continue to keep up with this series.
Also, please mark your calendars.
I'm doing something very, very special this month.
March 26th.
March 26th at 3:00 p.m.,
I'll be doing a JFK Jr. live presentation, brand new.
I created this presentation about five years ago.
So much new research, a new detective work by myself
and the team here that we've truly found.
We're recreating that seminar from five years ago
and we're going to deliver all live with some of the great insights we had before,
but some new insights to bring up as well.
Talk about did he have an autopilot, all these things,
and what can we learn from that.
That'll culminate the 7700 series as well, March 26, 3:00 p.m., Eastern Time
on the MzeroA YouTube, MzeroA Facebook.
There's a link to RSVP in the video description as well.
Lastly, Sun 'n Fun.
If you plan on being at Sun 'n Fun, I will hope you would join us.
Come find us in Hangar D, Hangar Delta.
Same spot we've been for many, many years.
I'll be in the booth all week, as well as Saturday at 12:00 p.m.
Steve O., a very good friend, Steveo1Kinevo will be in the booth,
the MzeroA booth from 12:00 to 1:00 as well.
I'll look forward to seeing you on the livestream.
I'll look forward to seeing you at Sun 'n Fun.
Enjoy the rest of this series as it comes out this month.
And most importantly, remember,
the good pilot is always learning.
Have a good day, guys. We'll see you.
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