| Crash Landing at Sioux City | |
|---|---|
 Crash Landing at Sioux City | |
| Vital statistics | |
| Series | Seconds from Disaster |
| Title | Crash Landing at Sioux City |
| Airdate | September 13, 2005 |
| Disaster | United Airlines Flight 232 |
| Date | July 19, 1989 |
| Kind | Air and Space |
| Nature | Engine Failure, Hydraulics Loss, Uncontrollable Landing |
| Fatalities | 111 |
Crash Landing at Sioux City is the 20th episode of Seconds from Disaster investigates how a simple engine failure took down a plane.
Plot[]
United Airlines Flight 232, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, loses hydraulic pressure after the tail-mounted no.2 engine's fan blade splits and disintegrates. The damage to the aircraft is so severe that it can only turn right. The pilots try to land at Sioux City, Iowa. As the DC-10 descends towards the runway at 6 times the normal descent rate, it rolls right, causing it to break up into three main parts and explode into a fireball. 111 of the 285 people on board are killed in the emergency landing.
Cause[]
The investigation, while praising the actions of the flight crew for saving lives, would later attribute the cause of
the accident to a failure of United Airlines maintenance processes and personnel to detect an existing fatigue crack. Post-crash analysis of the crack surfaces showed the presence of a penetrating fluorescent dye used to detect cracks during maintenance. The presence of the dye indicated that the crack was present and should have been detected at a prior inspection. The detection failure arose from poor attention to human factors in United Airlines' specification of maintenance processes.