Posted on 05/24/2018 8:40:58 AM PDT by BBell
It's a good thing Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans had an old abandoned airstrip on its property in 1988. Otherwise, a Boeing 737 from San Salvador might have had no place to land.
As The Times-Picayune reported in 1988, TACA Flight 110 lost engine power on its May 24 approach to New Orleans. The National Transportation Safety Board released a transcript of the cockpit voice recording later that year, and it shows the confusion of the pilot and first officer after the flight, en route from San Salvador via Belize, fell to an altitude of about 1,000 feet.
The transcript, combined with handwritten statements by crew members, seems to indicate that the TACA crew had little time and much to do from the time the engines quit until the plane landed -- a period of less than five minutes, the Picayune reported at the time.
"It's several tense moments and there's a lot happening in the cockpit," said Warren Wandel, the safety board investigator heading the crash study. But while the forced landing was required by engine failure, just why the engines died in midflight remains a mystery, Wandel said at the time.
The Picayune reported that after losing power in heavy rains over the Gulf of Mexico, the crew thought its engines had restarted when the plane reached Lake Borgne. Capt. Carlos Dardano at first told the New Orleans control tower he had one engine, then both.
Seconds later, he realized he had none.
"This (expletive) is not starting," Dardano told his crew at one point, according to the transcript.
He told the tower he could not land at New Orleans Lakefront Airport and Interstate 10 were beyond reach, too, he said.
Dardano told the tower he planned to make a 360-degree turn, head back toward Lake Borgne and
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Anyone know how you would get the plane out of where it’s at?
They toughened up the levee a little and flew it out of there.
I saw a show about this. The pilot was a man of steel.
Sully tough!
Saw the same show.The pilot had a real pair!
love the coloring in those old photos
Just curious but how did they get the plane out of there?
Any idea what the show was called? Did they let the same pilot that landed it fly it out?
May 8th 1978, National Airlines Flight 193 lands in Pensacola Bay, just a little short of the runway.............
Thanks for that link! They got 28 more years of service out of that plane. Awesome!
I must have missed the Movie they made about that Pilot.
Off to Wikipedia to get the details.
That’s a pretty short landing! If the engines were off, how did it stop so short?
PS. I’m a pilot.
This was at the Michoud Assembly Facility. Happened a year after I transferred to KSC in Florida. Apparently they did a short load of fuel to keep the weight down to be as light as they could then flew it from Michoud to Lake Front Airport a few miles away. One of the roads is fairly long and was used to transport the External Tank to a barge dock for shipment to KSC to be used on the Space Shuttle. Not the first plane to land there but certainly the first passenger plane to.
I remember when they hired an Mi-26 to get those Chinooks of the Afghan mountain. I watched the video. Awesome helicopter.
In the bottom picture you can see the covered barge at the Michoud dock that was used to transport the External Tank to KSC in FL. Rode it several times.
Drag on the wheels from the wet grass?
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