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WE0209
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WE0209
@Pro_Nuke
Christian,Conservative, Husband, Father & supporter of clean, safe, reliable nuclear power. Independent voter = Person over party affiliation.
All Over Katılım Ağustos 2012
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My friend is referring to the crash of Delta flight 191 while on approach to runway 17L at DFW in 1985.
Pilots kinda sorta knew about storms & microbursts, to include windshear, but it wasn’t taken so seriously. Flight 191 proceeded into a storm that had perched itself over the approach to the runway, following a LearJet that had landed safely before them.
Flight 191 ran into heavy rain, which isn’t much of a problem, but then encountered a microburst & windshear.
Airplanes need wind over the wings to fly. Then they fly at a precise speed on approach to avoid “stalling” (losing lift), but slow enough to land & get rid of all the lift after you do, stopping before running out of runway. If you’re flying into a headwind of 15 knots, and the wind suddenly stops, you’ve just lost 15 knots of speed & the lift associated with it.
This happened to flight 191, but much, much worse. The pilots had noticed some speed fluctuations, and talked about it, making adjustments to the throttles to make up for the wind. They were keeping themselves on the “glideslope” to the runway…descending ideally at a rate of around 600 to 800 feet per minute, depending on your speed.
Around 700’ above the ground, though, it wasn’t enough. They got caught in a microburst. In a microburst, it’s kind of like all the rain & all the cold air the Thunderstorm was holding onto just come dumping downward, all at once. In the same way a thermal will lift the airplane up, a microburst will push it down. You’re already slow for landing & there isn’t much extra lift for the wings to give if you raise the nose.
So, at around 700’ above the ground (I’m not sure of the exact height) flight 191 went from holding the Glideslope at 600-800 fpm with maybe 1-2° of nose down attitude, to falling at 3,000 fpm with the nose pitched 30° up to try & arrest the descent. They had pushed the throttles up, then pushed them up to the maximum, but it wasn’t enough.
The L-1011 “Tristar” jet touched down in a farmers field short of the runway. The landing gear held up, and the plane rolled along. It crossed state Highway 114 (the road my friend is referring to in his post), hitting a car & a couple streetlights. Fire began to enter the breached cabin; some passengers unbuckled their seatbelts to try and escape & were sucked out. The jet collided with a couple of water tanks & came to rest, torn asunder. 136 of the 163 were killed, as well as the driver of the car.
The FAA took action. It ordered that all new commercial jets had to be equipped with “Doppler” radars, which can detect shifting winds & windshear. The jet then announces some variation of “WINDSHEAR, WINDSHEAR” when the Doppler detects it. If it’s present, that’s it…you go around. If it detects it on the takeoff roll, it’s one of the few things we’ll abort the takeoff for once past 100 knots. If we’re too fast to abort, we’ll push the throttles up & delay lifting off the ground until we can’t, building extra speed. Airports also got Doppler radars so ATC could spot the threat, too.
Educating pilots about the threat became a top priority. The investigation revealed training was lacking in how to spot & escape from windshear. Now, every jet has some variation of a “Windshear Escape Maneuver”. It’s basically to go to maximum thrust, stow the speed brakes (which aren’t likely to be out) and pitch up to a known, steep angle. If that’s not enough to arrest the descent, you can increase the pitch until you are in & out of the “stick shaker”, meaning you are right above the stall margin. You leave the flaps wherever they currently are - changing flap settings might change lift, but it also changes drag & so it’s kind of an unknown as to what that will do here. You also leave the landing gear wherever it is, to include down…if you’re going to hit the ground, you may as well let them absorb some of the energy.
There was one other microburst crash, in 1994. That’s the last one in commercial aviation.
Air Safety #OTD by Francisco Cunha@OnDisasters
Lufthansa A330 arrival in Dallas Fort Worth - some will recall this road from a famous accident...
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Chuck Norris Was a Great Action Star -- but Politics May Overshadow His Legacy variety.com/2026/film/opin…
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She is flying First Class.
To tell Cubans how bad capitalism is.
I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸@ImMeme0
🚨BREAKING: Code Pink leftist activists are heading to Cuba to tell people living under communism how terrible Trump and America are. I wish Cuba would keep them.
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@Pro_Nuke lol. That’s mine and it’s in the garage pending its location in the house
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@OnDisasters That accident opened a lot of eyes, eventually making aviation so much safer.
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