Air Crashes and Miracle Landings - 60 Narratives (see above for EXTRACTS).

In the Questions and Answers chapter at the end our book Air Crashes and Miracle Landings we have a section asking what is a miracle landing and list five notable landings classed as “Miracles” at the time:

1. Captain Haynes’ landing of a DC-10 using engine power alone after failure of the control systems;
2. Captain Piché’s 80-mile glide culminating in an all-or-nothing touchdown at a U.S. military base on a mid-Atlantic island;
3. Captain Bob Pearson of “Gimli Glider” fame who ran out of fuel over Canada and used his gliding experience to touch down safely at a disused Air Force base where the runway had until shortly before been used for some motor racing. Luckily the aircraft stopped before reaching people including kids at the end.
   
4. Captain Sullenberger’s miracle ditching in New York’s Hudson River;
   
5. Captain Moody’s encounter with volcanic ash over the Indian Ocean off Indonesia, where all four engines of his 747 flamed out (stopped working). According to one newspaper he used words such as those that built the British Empire to reassure the passengers, only to find they restarted when they dropped into clean air.

Apart from the first, the incidents when looked at closely were not quite so “miraculous” as they first appeared, with the captains in some cases being partly responsible for getting into situations from which they were to heroically extricate themselves and receive considerable praise. In the book concluded by saying that for it to be classed a miracle, the key element is publicity based on an incident often where there is enough time for the seemingly hopelessness of the situation to be fully realized. This excludes, for instance, landings in gusting crosswinds or in the presence of wind shear where a few moments of great piloting skill were required to save the situation. That is to say, there are probably many more miracles than we realize.

With the term miracle also being applied to cases where only one person–often a child–survives a crash, or, as in the Colombian Plane crash, where the aircraft broke into three on landing and all the occupants except for one survived, Patrick Smith (author of the excellent book Ask The Pilot) in his latest blog on salon.com says it is time to retire the M-word. As usual  his remarks are very pertinent and interesting, and indeed many so-called miracles are not miracles at all.

However, though so few are true miracles, one has to have some sympathy with the media and realize they are not using it in its true sense. “Surprisingly” would be more apt but would not sell much copy. Anyway, it is much better than calling the pilots “heroes”. That should perhaps only be applied to pilots of aircraft, often military, who sacrifice their lives to avoid crashing on a built-up area or school playground.

Boeing 737 Colombian Plane Crash

The latest issue of the U.K. AEROPLANE magazine has the following review of AIR CRASHES AND MIRACLE LANDINGS giving it 4 out of 5 stars, meaning that it is considered “excellent”.

“AVIATION ACCIDENTS INVARIABLY attract media speculation on their causes, but it is sometimes months before the official investigators issue their reports, by which time anyone without a specific interest in a crash will have forgotten how they have often blamed the pilot who was probably not to blame anyway.

This new book sets out to answer how, when and why accidents happened, such as the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus A300 by an American warship; the clearing of fog at Zurich Airport by a Caravelle up and down the runway, overheating the brakes and causing the aircraft to crash on take-off; the loss of a Boeing 757 with pitot tube blocked by masking tape and, even more weird, the pre-programming of a DC-10 flight to hit Mount Erebus during a sightseeing flight.

There are chapters on the Amelia Earhart mystery, the shooting down of von Richthofen, the worst-ever aircraft accident at Teneriffe when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway, and many other incidents. All are cataloged in detail and make very interesting reading, although not just before you board your holiday flight. It is good that these facts are published and not just forgotten.”

A number of the narratives in Air Crashes and Miracle Landings might be relevant to the recent Air India crash where a relatively new Boeing 737-800 overran the runway at Mangalore, resulting in the deaths of 152 passengers out of 160, with 6 crew members surviving.
The aircraft landed beyond the runway threshold, then veered off the runway and after losing a wing on striking a concrete navigation aid, ended up in a valley.

It would seem that the unforgiving nature of the airport, left little margin for error. For instance in our book, the Qantas 747 that overran the runway at 100 M.P.H. was halted by the wheels sinking into the soft rain-drenched ground beyond it.

One commentator has suggested that the airline’s instruction to pilots that they try and keep their landings soft, could have been a factor in the pilot not bringing aircraft down hard–and hence more safely.

An article in the New York Times and Herald Tribune entitled Crash Raises Issue of India’s Aviation Oversight by By VIKAS BAJAJ and HEATHER TIMMONS paints a sorry picture of the situation in India with some students at flying schools paying others to fly many of the required flying hours in their place. (The Flying Dictionary mentions the fact that in the United States the main quality needed to become a pilot is to have a MasterCard–though it is not likely flying schools there would let others fly their hours for them.)

Christopher Bartlett

Air Crashes and Miracle Landings has a narrative relating the famous case where all four engines of a British Airways 747 stopped over the Indian Ocean with little chance of anyone surviving should it prove impossible to restart the engines. The crew did not know that it was volcanic ash that had caused the engines to stop, and it was only when they had to descend when they found the first officer’s oxygen mask was not working that they restarted.

However, they density and particle size of the ash was much greater than that recently over the UK and Europe that brought flights to a halt.

See Chapter 1: LOSS OF POWER OVER WATER