Alaska Airlines Flight 261

[Sampa]

Ok, this is a 250 page pdf file I found on the NTSB website on the final (I think it is the final) report on this air accident that took the live of the 83+ people on board.

bare basic: Elevator failure causes uncontrolled dive into the Pacific

 

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0201.pdf

 

[KerbonautInTraining]

Oh for the love of...

I just spent 30 minutes reading some very interesting documentation, the entire time thinking "why would an MD-80 need to carry things up and down in an elevator???"

As somebody who has loved airplanes since the age of 7 I am dumbfounded.

[Sampa]

lol, you DID eventually realize that the elevators control an aircraft's vertical axis, right?

[WestAir]

1 hour ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

Oh for the love of...

I just spent 30 minutes reading some very interesting documentation, the entire time thinking "why would an MD-80 need to carry things up and down in an elevator???"

As somebody who has loved airplanes since the age of 7 I am dumbfounded.

That made me lol.

To the topic at hand, this crash has always hit me in the feels. This crew fought all the way down. Two seconds before impact he was still making calls to his coworker to try and save them. I really, really wish they would have made it out of this one.

[Sampa]

indeed, and this hits me even harder because, as a mechanic in training, I KNOW that this entire problem was preventable.

[Nuke]

every problem is preventable, at least until upper management tells you they dont have the neccisary funds to buy new parts, and expect you use your voodoo to fix it anyway. at least thats my experience with pc repair.

[mikegarrison]

In retrospect, I wonder if they could have landed that airplane by flying to one of the dry lakebeds and landing at high airspeed. Instead, they fiddled around with the flaps, putting them out, taking them back in, putting them out again....

Obviously they thought the situation was as bad as it was going to get, and they were experimenting to make sure they knew what would happen during the landing. Unfortunately, they didn't realize the vast extent of the damage and the need to be as gentle as possible and just land the airplane as soon as possible.

Since the flight was to Seattle and the airline is based in Seattle, this was a big impact on the community here. For instance, my next-door neighbor's daughter was supposed to be on that flight, but she switched crew assignments. Also, I used to read Tom Stockley's wine column in the Seattle Times, and he was one of the passengers.

[Nibb31]

It was all down to an improper lubrication schedule. 

[KerbonautInTraining]

I don't know why, but the pulling force measurements were pretty sobering, 150+ lbs (70kg) of force to pull out of the first dive! 

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

It was all down to an improper lubrication schedule. 

No, everything was done on schedule. It just wasn't done correctly.

[WestAir]

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

In retrospect, I wonder if they could have landed that airplane by (...)

The only way the crew would have survived would have been to return to field moment trim issues were apparent. There was nothing at all in their checklists or in memory items that suggested this, which ultimately means there wasn't a single pilot flying in that era that would have saved this aircraft with the procedures at play.

Four or so months ago an MD-80 leaving Las Vegas had an elevator jammed in the up position. The aircraft pitched up on its own at about 120 knots. The crew aborted the take-off and the jam was promptly discovered as the result of a nut falling off the assembly. Had the elevator been jammed in a position where it wasn't noticed until after they committed to a take-off, there would be an MD-83 lying in pieces at the end of the Vegas strip. Sometimes you just get lucky because not all problems are survivable.

Edited January 20, 2016 by WestAir
Spelling errors. Ugh.

[Nibb31]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

No, everything was done on schedule. It just wasn't done correctly.

That's not what the report says. It says that the root cause was the lubrication interval. The lubrication procedures were too vague, but the report says " The extent to which these deficiencies in the lubrication procedure may have played a role in the inadequate lubrication of the accident jackscrew assembly could not be determined."

As a result, though, they rewrote the procedures and specified shorter intervals.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Nibb31

[mikegarrison]

15 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

That's not what the report says. It says that the root cause was the lubrication interval. The lubrication procedures were too vague, but the report says " The extent to which these deficiencies in the lubrication procedure may have played a role in the inadequate lubrication of the accident jackscrew assembly could not be determined."

As a result, though, they rewrote the procedures and specified shorter intervals.

I think you are taking this out of context. Blaming the lubrication schedule ignores that when they did do the lubrication, they did it completely inadequately. They spent one hour on what should have been a four hour job, and they fabbed up their own test tool that couldn't show the damage that was being done by the inadequate lubrication. The report is very cautious about saying this because they couldn't prove it, but there were a lot of media reports at the time that mechanics claimed management was pressuring them into doing the job as quickly as possible.

Bottom line is that there was not enough lubrication being done to that jackscrew. I guess that doing it poorly but more often might have helped, but why not just do it right?

[Sampa]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

That's not what the report says. It says that the root cause was the lubrication interval. The lubrication procedures were too vague, but the report says " The extent to which these deficiencies in the lubrication procedure may have played a role in the inadequate lubrication of the accident jackscrew assembly could not be determined."

As a result, though, they rewrote the procedures and specified shorter intervals.

yeah, the ironic thing was, that the FAA had actually accepted the interval that Alaska Airlines had been using at the time of the accident.  In fact, under Alaska's previous maintenance schedule, that particular aircraft was to have been grounded for maintenance but the change came before this could occur.