News came out over the weekend about a United Airlines Boeing 777-200 that took off from Maui’s airport back on December 18 – and nearly dropping to the ocean. Despite flight 1722 to Maui climbing to 2,200 feet and then plunging to within 775 feet of impact, news of the incident had not been reported.
In addition to questions around what happened, whether it was wind shear in a significant storm or whether the pilots raised their flaps too far, and possibly became disoriented, there’s been mystery around why no one on the plane – out of more than 200 passengers – posted about the incident to social media.
Reader Nancy reports being on the flight.
My husband and I were on this flight sitting in the back of the aircraft. It happened soon after takeoff when we were all seated with seatbelts on. The plane dipped down and then up like a quick fall and recovery. While several people screamed, no one was injured and it was over quickly. We did not realize how close the plane got to the ocean. The rest of the flight was uneventful, so while it was scary, it ended up being a blip in the flight- though a memorable one.
A passenger on board would have felt a significant drop. It was heavy turbulence, enough to make “several people” scream. But passengers wouldn’t likely have known how close they came to hitting the ocean. Just a scary turbulence event with no injuries, with the entire rest of the flight normal, didn’t rate social shares – and it was over soon enough that likely no one got cabin footage.
On the other hand, one former pilot who reports being a passenger on the flight suggests he knew they’d be close to the water based on how soon they dropped after takeoff – but not that they were actually alarmed, instead that the experience was “subtle” and “sinking.”
Former pilot and I was on that flight on that day. Shortly after [takeoff] the pilot slightly retarded the engines. I noticed it but it was subtle. Then we started sinking. The aircraft did not nose over into a dive. It felt like we were hit with a downdraft. Many screamed and the crew increased thrust and recovered and climbed up to FL39 and smooth air. I normally don’t get too bothered by turbulence but I knew we were very close to the water having only been in the air for slightly more than a minute.
As with the recent near miss between Southwest Airlines and Fedex planes in Austin and between American and Delta jets at New York JFK, the United flight continued. As a result, the cockpit voice recorder was overwritten. These recordings refresh their content every two hours. There’s a movement currently to require voice recordings to retain 25 hours of data, but even this would only be phased in over a long period applying to new delivery aircraft first.
As a result we’re hampered in our ability to access evidence that would shed greater light on the event.
Usually the captain will make an understated announcement–“bit of a slight downdraft there, folks” but maybe it didn’t feel quite so noticeable as it reads.
As I understand it, the crew filed a report when they got back so there is a record of what happened and how they responded.
If you were in the clouds and experiencing moderate or worse turbulence no one would see much difference if all that happened was the pilots pitched down to recover a mistake like premature flap retraction or momentary inattention to airspeed
@KimmieA
Not under 10,000 ft they won’t!
Why is this all coming to light six weeks later though?
Warranty reports are usually generated on a quarterly basis, so malfunctions won’t be read by anyone until the quarterly report comes out. So an incident in December won’t be read by all affected suppliers/OEM/airline reps until sometime later in January.
Hey FAA: Just put an iPhone on the dash and hit record for Christ’s sake. You’re welcome.
Even safety incidents /actual incidents only get summarized in a monthly report at every employer who ever made me a part of those reports/meetings. So progress runs something like this:
Month 1:
Me: New customer is scooping ore that is only 10% uranium into our dump trucks the size of a 2 story house. Imagine all of the extrenely heavy uranium in one corner, high up. We could tip over. Can we please build our own version of a “tractor trailer runs up and over a curb” test track (the real one was in Ohio and we were in Illinois), so we can feed our dynamics models with some real data points?
Upper manager, same smug bozo who thought China would never catch up to us in mining equipment, as late as 2005: No. Our trucks only fishtail, they don’t tip over.
Month 2:
Truck tips over at AZ test track. Engineer and driver are okay, but have to break windshield to get out.
Month 3: Safety meeting, where both I and Bozo are attending. Truck incident is shown in color slides. I say nothing and just smile.
Month 4: Little test track gets built.
Even safety incidents /actual incidents only get summarized in a monthly report at every employer who ever made me a part of those reports/meetings. So progress runs something like this:
Month 1: Me: New customer is scooping ore that is only 10% uranium into our dump trucks the size of a 2 story house. Imagine all of the extremely heavy uranium in one corner, high up. We could tip over. Can we please build our own version of a “tractor trailer runs up and over a curb” test track (the real one was in Ohio and we were in Illinois), so we can feed our dynamics
models with some real data points?
Upper manager, same Smug individual who thought China would never catch up to us in
mining equipment, as late as 2005: No. Our trucks only fishtail, they don’t tip over.
Month 2: Truck tips over at AZ test track. Engineer and driver are okay, but have to break windshield to get out.
Month 3: Safety meeting, where both I and Smug are attending. Truck incident is shown in color slides. I say nothing and just smile.
Month 4: Little test track gets built.
The “six phases of a project” have been jocularly described as:
1. Enthusiasm,
2. Disillusionment,
3. Panic,
4. Search for the guilty,
5. Punishment of the innocent, and
6. Praise and honor for the nonparticipants.
The list was used in computer science in the early 1970s, and quickly spread to engineering and government projects. Ephraim R. McLean called this the “all-too-true life cycle of a typical EDP system” in 1972.
More comments on this at dailymail.co.uk
It’s coming to light because someone with knowledge of a confidential, anonymous, non-punitive process designed to enhance safety by encouraging knowledge-sharing leaked identifying characteristics about the flight in question to Jon Ostrower.
I have no qualms about Jon’s journalistic integrity, and were I in his shoes certainly would report the same information if shared with me. But the ASAP/ASRS system works because the “right” people learn about systems and training failures, share this information with others, and take corrective action without media fanfare or villification of pilots (potentially) at fault. In other cases, systems/process failures can be identified and analyzed without pressure to “act” from a sensationalist media trying to feed a news cycle with always-juicy, always-relevant aviation near disasters.
Following the MAX debacle and distrust of institutions generally, it’s no surprise that the default response is cynicism and accusation of a cover-up (“why did it take so long for us to learn about this???”). It’s an earned reputation. But this situation arises from different roots… long before anyone in the media knew anything at all about this flight, it was timely reported (unlike the Qatar DOH-CPH 787) and analyzed and corrective measures were taken by stakeholders in a non-punitive process, exactly the way it should be.
Regarding the flaps theory, I’m not inclined to believe it. Take-off flaps are usually (but not always) set to 20. Retraction will occur in steps. There are two factors that govern retraction. First, a step will occur when the aircraft reaches X knots above the maneuvering speed for a given flaps setting. Second, there is a maximum allowable airspeed for any given flaps setting. According to FlightRadar24 data, this aircraft’s ground speed was roughly 240 knots. This exceeds the maximum allowable airspeed for all but the F1 setting. (If atmospheric conditions were not askew, the maneuvering speed factor would not be a consideration.) Based on this, I’m more inclined to believe an atmospheric condition was the cause and not pilot error. But, maybe I’m wrong.
If the flight director wasn’t set correctly and it was showing a nose down when they turned the autopilot on, the a/c would start a nose down pitch. The recovery would be to disconnect the AP immediately to keep it from descending. Q: Why would the FD not be set correctly? Why did they take so long to recover? I doubt it was wind sheer.
If the flight director wasn’t set correctly and it was showing a nose down when they turned the autopilot on, the a/c would start a nose down pitch. The recovery would be to disconnect the AP immediately to keep it from descending. Q: Why would the FD not be set correctly? Why did they take so long to recover? I doubt it was wind sheer. There are reports the power was reduced.
I believe the aviators knew immediately what the cause was and did an outstanding job in recovering the unexpected descent. If they recovered the descent and still didn’t know what caused it common safety sense would have dictated a return to the field to figure out what was going on. If they continued to SFO w/o knowing the cause then they would have put their flight in severe jeopardy if it happened again. Because As we all know there is no place to urgently land between Hawaii and the west coast.
Picard
So @GKK….what have we learnt? I think avaition suffers from optimism bias in that it thinks it is great at safety but who says so? We suffer terribly from blame and failure to learn. 737 max was not a one off; the issues that led to the accidents have been around for years and continue to dog us. Until we smash through that pretence then I argue we learn nothing…..more of the same. Train the crews, change procedures!