Boeing Plane Nearly Crashed After Wrong Button Pushed

Photo from Boeing website.

Chicago's Boeing Co. apparently forgot to tuck an owner's manual into the glove box of one of its jets.

An investigation by the Japan Transport Safety Board revealed a Boeing 737-700 plane nearly dive bombed and crashed earlier this month, simply because the co-pilot pressed a wrong button. The Wall Street Journal reports that the co-pilot was trying to release the cockpit door for the captain, who was returning from a potty break during the roughly 900 mile flight from Okinawa to Tokyo.

The JTSB said the button mishap caused the plane to tilt 130 degrees and dive over 1,900 meters during the span of 30 seconds, causing two flight attendants to be injured. Six of the 117 passengers on board reported air sickness or neck pains.

An All Nippon Airways spokesperson reportedly said the airline going forward will "take preventative measures to make sure that pilots do a double-check on where the controls are located as they leave and return to the cockpit."

The announcement of the near crash came immediately following the celebration of the first delivery of the long-awaited Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane, which will enter service on Oct. 26.

Besides facing numerous production delays, the Dreamliner also became embroiled in political gamesmanship, when Boeing announced it would be moving production of the plane from Everett, Washington, to right-to-work state South Carolina, ostensibly as payback to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union, who have conducted several strikes against Boeing. The National Labor Relations Board is still in an ongoing dispute with the company to try and move production back to Washington.

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By Prescott Carlson in News on September 29, 2011 2:20 PM

Comments [rss]

BlueFairlane

While I am sympathetic to your sentiment and often experience similar feelings toward the media (including this specific outlet) whenever there's an earthquake or a tornado or something, I can't help but think you're downplaying the severity of this event.

Let's look at what happened. (I admit, my understanding of physics is strictly 100-level, but I think my error will be within an order of magnitude of right). The plane dropped 1920 meters (6299 feet) in about 35 seconds, or and average drop of about 106 meters (350 feet) per second. Assume this isn't a constant velocity but involves a steady vertical acceleration followed by a steady vertical deceleration, and you come up with 17 seconds of accleration pointed down at 7.1 meters per second. Subtract gravity, and this translates to a vertical sensation of 2.5 meters per second, or 0.3 g. Not quite vomit comet, but something worthy of, say, Mars. The next 17 seconds would have the same acceleration in the opposite direction, meaning you'd add gravity and come up with 1.7 g. Combine this with acceleration in the horizontal direction as the plane's making a sharp turn, and it's even greater. Your linked article says the plane actually hit 2.7g, and that it topped out at a speed of mach 0.828, or 630 miles an hour.

Now, I'm sure this is all well within structural tolerance of the plane, but it sure as hell isn't fun for the passengers. And there's a very real question of how much danger this plane was in, which neither article addresses. Yes, they recovered with 37,000 feet between them and the ground, but that's really an insignificant figure. The question is how likely a 737 in this situation is to recover. If you put 100 pilots in this same roll with 40,000 feet of space to play with, how many are going to pull out and how many are going to wind up a smoking pit? And if they do survive, how many of the 171 passengers are going to be mentally scarred for life? And if they do wind up a smoking pit, how many of the families of these passengers are going to care whether it was the captain or the first officer pushing the button?

My feeling is that while the article may not have the jargon right, the tone is fine considering the situation.

tomdarch

The use of the term "co-pilot" was the big flag that this was a clueless re-hash of a sub-par article. "Nearly crashed" - isn't it an important little fact that the plane started at 41,000 ft. and recovered at 34,700 ft? That's 6 and a half vertical miles between the recovery point and the ground... For less clueless coverage, this was flight NH 140 - a search will turn up better info. Here's a far better write up:

http://www.flightglobal.com/ne...

Note that there is additional investigation going on by Japan's Transportation Safety Board to verify this description of the incident.

Please stop using the non-sense term "co-pilot". In this case, the pilot who hit that trim control was a first officer, and the person returning from the rest room was a captain. But the crucial fact here is that both captains and first officers must be fully certified for that aircraft in order to get behind the controls. There are no "interns" or "apprentices" at the controls of a passenger jet, they are both fully licensed pilots and both fully certified to be at the controls of that type of plane. In fact, because those "ranks" are primarily a function of seniority within the particular airline, with all the layoffs and rehirings in the industry, there are plenty of situations where a first officer has a good deal more experience flying than a captain, and may even have more experience flying that type of aircraft. So, in a sense, both pilots are co-pilots, but it's still far less stupid and more accurate to discuss "a pilot" (singular) or "the pilots" (plural) on a flight, and if necessary, indicate who has the rank of captain and who has the rank of first officer in that airline's internal hierarchy.

Sadly, most coverage of air incidents is shockingly bad. A commercial pilot, Patrick Smith writes a column called "Ask the Pilot" where he frequently has to rip apart news coverage of these incidents and explain what actually happened and why comments like "forgot to tuck an owner's manual into the glove box of one of its jets" is just plain dumb.

Cayloe

"nearly dive bombed and crashed" is dangerous hyperbole. Even planes as big as a 737 can roll without crashing. Incidents like this are why you are encouraged to keep your seat belt fastened at all times, even when the seat belt light is off.