A Plane Lost Its Roof At 24,000ft - This Is What Happened Next
On April 28th, 1988, Aloha Airlines Flight 243, took off from Hawaii's Hilo International Airport.
The flight was traveling to Honolulu, less than an hour away. The weather was glorious, conditions were optimal, but just a few minutes after takeoff, a massive boom suddenly jolted the entire plane.
Without any warning, the roof covering the first class cabin was explosively ripped away. Passengers and flight crew panicked.
- Would they be sucked out into the big blue sky?
- Would they be able to make an emergency landing?
- Would the rest of the plane break apart at any minute?
If you want to find out what happened, stay tuned as we take off into this terrifying story and many more like it. Aboard Flight 243 on that fateful day, where 89 passengers and six crew members, including captain Robert Schornstheimer and First Officer Madeline Tompkins.
Together, they had more than 10,000 hours of flight experience with this model of aircraft, the Boeing 737. The plane was 19 years old, about 10 years from the end of its expected life span. And earlier that day, it had made three round trip flights from Honolulu to Hilo, Maui and Kauai.
Nothing unusual is noted in the pre-departure inspection. And the plane had recently passed a Boeing service bulletin and an airworthiness directive by two separate inspectors. On paper, the aircraft was in top condition and ready to go.
However, as one passenger was getting on, she looked out over the boarding bridge and noticed a crack in the aircraft's fuselage about halfway between the aircraft door and the bridge hood. She assumed the staff must have known about it, and so said nothing to any ground crew or personnel. After all preflight checks were cleared, the plane took off without incident.
The aircraft began its ascent, climbing up further and further with passengers still being shown the seatbelt on signs. As the pilots started leveling off the plane at around 24,000 feet, that's when they heard it.
A boom!
A huge cacophonous eruption followed by the rushing sound of wind. First Officer Tompkins' head was flung back and she saw pieces of debris like insulation foam floating around in the cockpit. It was then that the pilots looked back and noticed the entry door to the cockpit was missing.
But where the first-class ceiling should've been, all they could see now was blue sky. Out in first class,passengers were clinging to their seats, utterly terrified. They'd witnessed a small section of the left-hand side of the plane, suddenly rupture, which had led to explosive decompression of the cabin and 300 mile per hour winds ripping off the roof.
Now aircraft have cabin air systems that control pressurization, air flow, and temperature. The higher up in the atmosphere a plane flies, the less oxygen there is and the colder it gets. So these systems are critical to ensure passengers don't suffocate or freeze on their flight.
When explosive decompression happens, though, these systems stop working, which is why on passenger planes, oxygen masks drop from the ceiling. However, on Flight 243, an 18-foot section of the roof and sides of the plane had been torn off above the passengers' head along with their oxygen masks.
They were, thankfully, still strapped into their seats, but the cabin crew that had been standing there had to cling on to anything they could to prevent being swept off their feet, but tragically one didn't make it in time.
Number one, attendant Clarabelle Lansing, was immediately swept out of the hole that appeared in the left side of the aircraft.
Number two attendant, Michelle Honda, was thrown to the ground, but managed to crawl up and down the aisle to check on the passengers and try to keep them calm. With the cockpit still mostly intact, the pilots donned their own oxygen masks.
They realized quickly that all of their controls felt loose. The plane was rolling left and right threatening to drop out of the sky any second. Tompkins turned their transponder into an emergency code to notify Honolulu that they needed to make an emergency landing in nearby Maui.
But the noise of the cockpit was so loud none of her transmissions could be heard. The pilots couldn't communicate with the flight attendants or even hear one another. And so resorting to hand signals, they began an emergency descent.
Wasting no time, they dropped fast, at one point plummeting down at more than 4,100 feet per minute. The ideal rate of descent in passenger jets traveling above 10,000 feet is around 3000 feet per minute to prevent a steep or uncontrollable drop, but considering Flight 243's already uncontrollable situation, they just needed to get on the round as fast as possible.
Eventually they dropped below 14,000 feet. Tompkins was able to reach Maui's emergency channel and requested an emergency landing, along with medical equipment for what she assumed would be a lot of casualties and fatalities.
Maui began preparations at Kahului Airport. As the passengers in first class began to suffocate from the lack of oxygen. When they made it below 10,000 feet, Captain Schornstheimer slowed the aircraft down in accordance with air traffic control speed limitations.
At this height, they could at least breathe and began to gradually turn the plane towards the runway. As he slowed down to 170 knots, about 195 miles per hour, he noticed the plane became less responsive. To land, he needed to be going at least 130 knots, around 50 miles per hour slower, but he had no choice.
It was either slow down and lose control of the plane in the air, or make it to the runway and risk crashing in a super speedy landing. A breakneck 170 knots it was.
He ordered Tompkins to lower the landing gear. The main gear light flashed green, but one extension light wasn't green, the nose gear wasn't down. They manually overrode the computer to drop it, but the light refused to illuminate.
They tried it one more time and pulled the override handle down, but the light still wasn't on. Usually they'd be able to check if it was down through a viewer, but it was blocked. And instead of wasting time trying to clear it, the captain insisted on landing the plane immediately.
If he was wrong and the front landing gear wasn't actually down, they weren't going to hit the tarmac at almost 200 miles per hour, without anything to stabilize the front of the plane. It'd be a guaranteed crash, but they had no choice, but to pray.
Thankfully, those landing gear indicator lights turned out to be malfunctioning. The nose gear was indeed down and 13 minutes after the explosive decompression, Schornstheimer and Tompkins hit the runway and successfully landed.
What greeted the emergency services at Kahului Airport made everyone's jaws drop. The plane had been ripped open like a can of sardines. Of the 89 passengers and crew, 65 of them were injured, eight seriously, and one, Clarabelle Lansing, fatally.
The plane to was damaged beyond repair. Now last I checked, passenger jets like this aren't meant to turn into convertibles. So what on earth happened here?
Well, typically, the fuselage skin of a plane is around 2.5 millimeters thick, so about the same thickness as two credit cards, It's made up of sheet metal, which, on the Boeing 737s, were made in panels about four meters long and two meters wide.
To attach them together, holes are drilled into the edges and they're joined by a series of rivets. Obviously, the skin is weaker at these overlapped joints, which is where the investigators began to suspect the original hole had appeared.
They then interviewed the passenger who claimed she'd seen a crack in the fuselage before takeoff. he area she pointed out was the exact same area investigators believed the original hole appeared before the high winds ripped off the rest of the roof.
So how had not one, but two separate inspectors missed this crack?
It turned out to keep the cost of inspecting older Boeing aircraft down, the Federal Aviation Administration only made fuselage inspections mandatory along the two most critical joints. Inspections of the other joints fell to the discretion of each airline.
Despite the aircraft having operated for 35,496 hours or four years in a salty and highly corrosive oversea environment, Aloha Airlines hadn't thought it necessary to inspect every last joint. It was this combination of maintenance complacency that ultimately led to Flight 243's terrifying ordeal.
It was such a catastrophic failure of maintenance standards that US regulators overhauled the inspection process of all older aircraft in their service. The Airworthiness Assurance Task Force was established, mandatory corrosion control programs were developed, and if a defect was found on one plane, an entire fleet re-inspection could be ordered.
It was a huge, expensive undertaking, but one that was too late for Clarabelle Lansing. Sadly, her body was never found, but it could have been worse were it not for the incredibly brave actions of the crew.
They were rightfully hailed as heroes.
However, they wouldn't be the last crew to live through something so scary because of bad maintenance practices. Before we take a look at another incredible story that I'd argue is even more shocking, be sure to hit those like and subscribe buttons down below. All done?
SOURCE : BRIGHT SIDE