Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Really Crazy Airline Incidents

1- Aloha Flight 243- The roof is gone, but they landed!

I am not kidding, this is how a plane in 1988 looked upon landing. While at 24,000 feet altitude a hole opened in the roof sucking a flying attendant out of the plane. She was the only person who died from this accident! The plane landed safely.

2- Lightening
A plane in South America was hit by lightening strike and crashed in the Amazon jungles in 1971. There was only one survivor who had to walk in the jungle for ten days until she was found!


3- Striking birds:
These beautiful birds can be deadly. A flight taking off from Boston in 1960 struck a flock of starlings , and each of the 4 engines swallowed at least one bird. Sixty-two people were killed. No word about causalities among the birds.

4- Why Your Math Skills are Important:
Whoever filled an Air Canada jet with fuel in 1983 was an idiot. Instead of using the metric system to calculate the fuel needed for the trip he used a different system. The plane landed urgently in an air force base after running out of fuel. Everyone survived.

5- Stupid Terrorists
In 1996, three Ethiopian men hijacked an Ethiopian flight and asked the pilot to fly from Kenya to Australia to seek political asylum. The pilot told them he doesn't have fuel to fly to Australia, but they showed him a manual mentioning that the jet can fly for 11 hours, and dismissed what the pilot told them. When the plane ran out of fuel it crashed into the water near Comoros killing 120 out of 170. Best thing: those three idiots died and the pilot survived. A tourist by the beach taped the plane crashing in water, here's the clip:




6- Stupid Pilot!
This was an internal flight in Brazil between Sao Paolo and a city called Belem in 1989. The pilot tried to locate Belem on his radar, the reading was 027.0 degrees, but he read it as 270 degrees. He headed to a totally different location in the Amazon jungle where no airports or any kind of life existed, and started landing thinking he was landing in the airport. He eventually landed on trees after he ran out of fuel trying to locate the airport. There were 41 survivors. They were locked in the jungle, but some survivors walked 40 kilometers until they found farmers who were able to contact authorities.
Here's a picture of the crashed plane:


7- Half-way to Heaven:
In 1990, a British Airways flight was heading from England to Spain when the windscreen by the pilot's side broke and the pilot was jerked out of his seat, with most of his body hanging out from the window at a 17,000 feet-altitude. Flying attendants rushed into the captain and held him from his feet to prevent him from completely being ejected. The co-pilot made an emergency landing and everyone survived. The pilot was treated and returned to work 6 months later. He now works with an airline called Easy Jet !

8 comments:

Sel3 said...

I like those posts you make about Airline crashes, and I like this topic in general, on NatGeo there is a series called Air Crash Investigation and I love it. the thing is that it happened more than ones that I read a post by you or watch an episode about this and I have to fly the next day, it freaks me out!

Unknown said...

the flying attendant who got sucked out of the airplane!!!! i cant imagine her finale moments, i really feel sick for her,dropping all that distance knowing that she will be nothing but a splat, that's horrible

thx for the share

NasEr said...

i think there was a more significant incident about metric measurements ..something between the states and UK i think..can't remember..something about war maybe,or a submarine ..
anyone ?

Hareega said...

sel3, yes it's a little frightening but I admit some of these stories are incredibly starnge and interesting to watch.

majd... probably she died immediately before she touched the ground, that's my guess with all the difference in pressure and the cold weather she probably lost consciousness before dying

naser.... not sure man!

Ali Dahmash said...

what a relief considering that Im flying Cypris Air after 2 days for the first time to Paris;)

Hani Obaid said...

A few years ago, a plane in south America crashed very shortly after take-off. It turned out that it was being re-painted, and the painters covered up all the sensors so they won't be damaged. Unfortunately they forgot to uncover them when done.

Also last year I flew direct from Amman to NYC. Everything was fine until the plane was landing and just about to hit the runway, at the last moment the whole plane started shaking very violently, people started screaming, then the pilot went back up and apologized. He said the control tower had cleared him to land on that runway but when he made his approach (night-time) he noticed a plane was on the runway!

Hani Obaid said...

The most significant incident where the differences between the metric and American systems caused a problem was when the Mars probe was lost. The US is stubbornly refusing to go Metric. They consider it something of a patriotic point.

Hareega said...

hani obaid, sorry to hear about incident you had, my friend had exactly the same thing in a flight in Dallas -without the shaking part- the pilot saw a plane in front of him right after landing ! It looks like these incidents happen more than we think.

By the way, America went metric sometime in the mid-70s but i don't think it worked very well