Posted on 04/19/2018 11:05:50 AM PDT by CedarDave
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Many were horrified on Tuesday upon learning an Albuquerque woman was killed after being partially pulled out of a plane when a nearby window was smashed by debris from an exploding engine.
“Two words: extremely rare,” said Alan Diehl, a former air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Air Force, of incidents involving passengers being pulled from planes in flight.
But on Nov. 3, 1973, a similar scenario unfolded on a flight over southwest New Mexico heading from Houston to Las Vegas, Nev.
Then, a Texas man died after he was pulled entirely from the plane when an engine on a National Airlines DC-10 flight blew up. G.F. Gardner, 47, of Beaumont, Texas, was pulled from the plane at 40,000 feet over an area near Magdalena.
His skeletal remains were found two years later during construction of the Very Large Array radio telescope near Socorro.
“That engine literally fell apart,” passenger David Drucker told the Journal in a Nov. 5, 1973, article.
The plane made an emergency landing at the Albuquerque airport, and 24 of the 127 surviving passengers and crew members were treated for smoke inhalation, ear problems and minor abrasions, according to the 1975 accident report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Jennifer Riordan was only 43, married with pre-teen children, a girl and boy. She was on her way home from a business trip to NY. She worked for Wells Fargo. So far on the company’s internal website there are over 3300 messages of condolence from others who work at WF. She was a well-liked member of her community and was actively involved in several charities. The random nature of what happened to her is a life lesson that we should find as much joy in life as possible and never take life for granted.
“G.F. Gardner, 47, of Beaumont, Texas, was pulled from the plane at 40,000 feet over an area near Magdalena”
Poor bastard...as he hit 10,000 feet he said so far so good and I can breath again!
I don’t believe I have EVER seen an aircraft seat made of pot metal. Steel and aluminum, yes. Same as the rest of the aircraft.
As for plastic ...
My seat on a UH60 consist of a steel frame and half-inch thick Kevlar composite bucket.
WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!!!
Nine people lost on this plane.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/25/us/9-lost-23-injured-as-jet-s-skin-rips-over-pacific.html
I read once that a B 17 got hit over Germany which tore the tail section off. Rear gunner was unable to bail out and rode it down. Apparently the wind drag on the empennage plus a relatively soft landing in trees enabled him to walk away and spend the duration in a stalag. Talk about lucky!
From what I read and heard, I don’t think she actually died from being sucked out of the window. They said she still had her seat belt on and it kept inside the plane.
The nurse describing the incident made it sound like she was killed from the engine shrapnel coming through the window. Sounds like she would have died no matter what.
Note in the pictures of the seats in the Southwest flight there were documents on the middle seat including a safety/emergency informational one typically found in the seat back location for magazines etc. Did not move an inch but she was sucked out and the impact with the wing and body of the plane are what killed her.
Interesting links here, the windows are designed not to shatter even when struck pretty severely
https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-a-window-broke-in-an-airplane
https://www.quora.com/What-are-windows-of-airplanes-made-of-and-how-strong-are-they
"Officials here said the damage was not as extensive as the damage suffered April 28, 1988, when part of the fuselage of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 peeled off in flight from Hilo to Honolulu. That incident, in which one flight attendant was swept out of the plane to her death,..."
Thanks-——all of them are horrifying.
Can you imagine that happening and you are left sitting there in the plane until landing——looking at the opening to the outside?
.
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He probably started feeling warm again for a few minutes.
What air gets sucked out as the cabin depressurizes must be replaced for air to continue to be sucked out. Those jets can’t pump air into the cabin that fast.
Once the cabin is depressurized it just wind and noise.
This has a nice little clip in it. Not that fast, only 150 mph, but you see little buffiting around the door. Doesn’t show the JM doing the door check. When the JM in the old days we hung way out the door with our hands on the insides and toes hanging out over the step.
06/10/1990 British Airways BAC-111 Oxfordshire, England On a flight from Birmingham, England to Malaga, Spain, at FL 173, a large section of windshield fell away from the aircraft. The decompression pulled the captain out from under his seatbelt. Despite trying to hold onto the yoke, the captain was sucked out into the opening. A steward in the cockpit was able to grab hold of his legs. Another steward was able to strap himself into the vacant seat and aid in holding onto the captain's legs. The copilot wearing full restraints made an emergency landing at Southampton. The captain remained half way out of the aircraft for 15 minutes and suffered only frostbite and some fractures. Improper bolts used to replace the windshield two days earlier resulted in the accident.
It’s not called Bernoulli’s law for nothing.
And from same Link.
01/26/1972 JAT
DC-9-32 Hermsdorf, Czechoslovakia The plane crashed after the detonation of a bomb in the forward cargo hold. A flight attendant, 22 year old Vesna Vulovic, fell 33,330 feet in the tail section and although she broke both legs and was paralyzed from the waist down, survived. She was in a coma for 27 days and it took 16 months for her to recover
I can’t begin to wrap my head around how many flights and miles flown there would be in 45 years. I say it unimaginably rare.
Q says the 1973 accident was secret Deep State practice for this week’s incident. /s.
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