RIP, famous person

[Gravdigr]

Sadly this guy isn't/wasn't famous.

But he should have been.

Alfred C. Haynes was an airline pilot that crash-landed a DC-10 in Sioux City, Iowa with almost no controls (no hydraulics) after a catastrophic rear engine failure. 111 people died, but more importantly, thanks to Mr. Haynes and the crew, 185 survived.

You may remember the video of the crash with plane cartwheeling into the picture way short of the runway:



Mr. Haynes was 87 years old.

[Carruthers]

I remember Capt. Haynes and the Sioux City accident.

It was a remarkable feat of airmanship to have put the aircraft down under the circumstances without greater loss of life.

By coincidence, in my book stack I have 'Flight 232' by Laurence Gonzales which is an account of the flight and subsequent investigation.

I've just moved it to the top.

RIP Captain.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Holder of the women's land speed record, killed testing her car in Oregon.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

Sadly this guy isn't/wasn't famous.

But he should have been.

Alfred C. Haynes was an airline pilot that crash-landed a DC-10 in Sioux City, Iowa with almost no controls (no hydraulics) after a catastrophic rear engine failure. 111 people died, but more importantly, thanks to Mr. Haynes and the crew, 185 survived.

You may remember the video of the crash with plane cartwheeling into the picture way short of the runway.

Mr. Haynes was 87 years old.

A couple of extracts from his obituary in this morning's Daily Telegraph.

Alfred Haynes, pilot who saved 184 lives following a mid-air explosion – obituary

Captain Alfred C Haynes, who has died aged 87, was hailed a hero in 1989 when, with the help of his crew, he managed to land his stricken United Airlines DC-10 aircraft at Sioux City Airport in Iowa despite having no conventional control over it; 184 of the 296 people on board survived, and in simulated tests afterwards not one of 57 pilots could replicate what Haynes had accomplished.

On the afternoon of July 19 1989, UA Flight 232 took off from Denver, Colorado, bound for Chicago. About an hour into the journey, while the aircraft was at 37,000 feet over Iowa, the foot-wide titanium fan disk in the tail engine exploded. Shards from the debris penetrated all three of the aircraft’s hydraulic systems in the area, causing all of the fluid in them to leak out in a matter of seconds.

Haynes was a highly experienced pilot, and when he became aware that there was a problem of some kind, he shut off fuel to the rear-mounted engine, knowing that the DC-10 could fly on its other two. Yet his first officer, William Records, told him that whatever he did with the control column, it did not manoeuvre the tail or the wings. The loss of hydraulics meant that the aircraft was almost impossible to fly, let alone to land.

They and flight engineer Dudley Dvorak were joined in the cockpit by Dennis Fitch, a United training captain who was one of the passengers. With his aid, and with Fitch kneeling between the seats, they switched the thrust between one engine and the other to provide a crude form of control.

Nevertheless, all they could achieve was to straighten out the jet as it made a series of right-handed spirals and descended at about 1,000ft per minute for the next half an hour. Haynes said later that he was too busy to be scared.

He was keenly aware that about 50 of the passengers were children – the airline had been running a cheap-fares promotion – some seated on their parents’ laps. Retaining his composure, he told all aboard to brace for a bump harder than any they had experienced as the aircraft came in to make an emergency landing at Sioux City. When the controllers said they could land on any runway, Haynes, with humour, said: “You want to be particular and make it a runway?”

Fitch said he would buy him a beer afterwards. Haynes replied: “I don’t drink, but I’ll sure as s––t have one.” Flight 232 made its approach at 220 knots, instead of the usual 140, dropping through the air at a rate six times faster than normal. The tip of its right wing struck the ground first, gouging a hole 18 inches deep in the concrete. The jet pivoted, broke up and burst into flames as it ploughed into a cornfield. Haynes was knocked out, but when the shattered remains of the cockpit were found half an hour later, all four men in it were alive.

Haynes gave much of the credit to others, including those in the control tower and the emergency workers, and to luck – having good weather, for instance. For a time, he said, he had felt guilt, wondering why 111 people had died. Then he had started to wonder how it was that 185 had survived. It was the passengers’ behaviour during the flight and its aftermath that stayed with him: “I will stand in awe of them for the rest of my life.”

Haynes resumed flying three months after the crash and retired in 1991. Several survivors of Flight 232 accompanied him on his last flight.
Thereafter he became a public speaker, extolling the value of teamwork and speaking about post-traumatic stress disorder. He raised more than $1 million in donations for the accident’s survivors.

In 1996 he suffered more tragedy when his elder son, Tony, was killed in a motorcycle accident. The following year, his wife of four decades, Darlene, died of a rare infection. Haynes said that what he had learned was that there were no healing explanations for such events; they simply had to be accepted.

Several years later, his daughter Laurie needed a bone-marrow transplant, but her insurance did not cover the operation. An appeal by Haynes raised some $550,000, much of it coming from the crash survivors and enabling the procedure to be carried out successfully.

He is survived by his daughter and by his younger son.

BiB I doubt very much that I would have gone anywhere near an aircraft ever again after an experience like that.