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Turkish Airlines Flight 981

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Passengers
  
335

Aircraft name
  
Operator
  
Survivor
  
0

Crew count
  
11

Survivors
  
0

Date
  
3 March 1974

Fatalities
  
346 (all)

Passenger count
  
335

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 assetsnydailynewscompolopolyfs1255196614884

Summary
  
Aircraft design flaw, cargo door failure leading to explosive decompression, destruction of control systems, and loss of control

Site
  
Ermenonville ForestFontaine-Chaalis, Oise, France

Aircraft type
  
Similar
  
Turkish Airlines Flight 452, American Airlines Flight 96, American Airlines Flight 191, Charkhi Dadri mid‑air co, Saudia Flight 163

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 was a regularly scheduled flight from Istanbul Yesilköy Airport to London Heathrow Airport with an intermediate stop in Paris at Orly Airport. On 3 March 1974 the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight crashed into the Ermenonville forest outside Paris, killing all 346 people on board. At the time, it was the deadliest plane crash in aviation history. It still remains the fourth-deadliest plane crash in aviation history, is the deadliest involving a DC-10, the second deadliest with no survivors, the deadliest to have occurred on French soil, and the second worst aviation accident in Europe. The crash was also known as the Ermenonville air disaster, from the forest where the aircraft crashed.

Contents

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 Turkish Airlines Flight 981 Wikipedia

The crash was caused when an improperly secured cargo door at the rear of the plane broke off, causing an explosive decompression which severed cables necessary to control the aircraft. Because of a known design flaw left uncorrected before and after the production of DC-10s, the cargo hatches did not latch reliably, and manual procedures were relied upon to ensure they were locked correctly. Problems with the hatches had occurred previously, most notably in an identical incident that happened on American Airlines Flight 96 in 1972, the so-called "Windsor Incident". Investigation showed that the handles on the hatches could be improperly forced shut without the latching pins locking in place. It was noted that the pins on the hatch that failed on Flight 981 had been filed down to make it easier to close the door, resulting in the hatch being less resistant to pressure. Also, a support plate for the handle linkage had not been installed, although manufacturer documents showed this work as completed. Finally, the latching had been performed by a baggage handler who did not speak Turkish or English, the only languages provided on a warning notice about the cargo door's design flaws and the methods of compensating for them. After the disaster, the latches were redesigned and the locking system significantly upgraded.

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Aircraft

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 grasshoppaircom 201606

The aircraft, a DC-10 Series 10 (production designation Ship 29), was built in Long Beach, California, under the manufacturer's test registration N1337U, and leased to Turkish Airlines as TC-JAV on 10 December 1972. The plane, owned by Mitsui, was originally to be purchased by All Nippon Airways, but the Japanese airline declined the aircraft in favor of the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. It had 12 six-abreast first-class seats and 333 nine-abreast economy seats, for a total of 345 passenger seats. At the time of the accident there were only two people seated in first class, while economy class was fully occupied. The flight crew were all Turkish. Flight attendant nationalities included 4 from the U.K, 3 French and 1 Turkish. Flight 981's captain was Nejat Berköz, age 44, with 7,000 flying hours. First Officer Oral Ulusman, 38, had 5,600 hours flying time, and Flight Engineer Erhan Özer, 37, had 2,120 flying hours experience.

Accident

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Flight 981 had flown from Istanbul that morning, landing at Paris's Orly International Airport just after 11:00 am local time. The aircraft was carrying 167 passengers and 11 crew members in its first leg, and 50 of these passengers disembarked in Paris. The flight's second leg, from Paris to London Heathrow Airport, was normally underbooked, but due to a strike by British European Airways employees many London-bound travellers who had been stranded at Orly were booked onto Flight 981, delaying the flight departure by 30 minutes. Among the passengers on board were 17 English rugby players who had attended a FranceEngland match the previous day, six British fashion models, 48 Japanese bank management trainees on their way to England, and passengers from a dozen other countries.

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The aircraft left Orly Airport at 12:32 pm bound for Heathrow Airport and took off in an easterly direction before turning north. Shortly after take off, Flight 981 was cleared to flight level 230 (23,000 feet (7,000 m)) and started turning the west towards London. Shortly after 12:40 pm, just after Flight 981 passed over the town of Meaux, the rear left cargo door blew off and the sudden difference in air pressure between the cargo area and the pressurised passenger cabin above it, which amounted to 2 pounds per square inch or 14 kilopascals, caused a section of the cabin floor above the open hatch to fail and blow out through the hatch along with six occupied passenger seats attached to the floor section. The fully recognizable bodies of the six passengers who were ejected from the aircraft were found along with the plane's rear hatch, having landed in a turnip field near Saint-Pathus, approximately 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) south of where the remainder of the plane was found. An air traffic controller noted that as the flight was cleared to FL230, he had briefly seen a second echo on his radar which remained stationary behind the aircraft which was likely the remains of the rear cargo door.

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When the door blew off, the primary as well as both sets of backup control cables that ran beneath the section of floor that blew out were completely severed, destroying the pilots ability to control the plane's elevators, rudder, and Number 2 and 3 engines. The flight data recorder showed that the throttle for Engine 2 snapped shut when the door failed. The loss of control of these key components resulted in the pilots losing control of the aircraft entirely.

The aircraft almost immediately attained a 20-degree, nose-down attitude and began picking up speed while Captain Berköz and First Officer Ulusman struggled to regain control. At some point, one of the crew members pressed their microphone button broadcasting the pandemonium in the cockpit on the departure frequency. Controllers also picked up a distorted transmission from the plane and the aircraft's pressurisation and overspeed warnings were heard over the pilots' words in Turkish, including the co-pilot saying "the fuselage has burst!" As the plane's speed increased, the additional lift raised the nose again. Berköz is recorded calling out, "Speed!" and pushed the throttles forward in order to level off. Seventy-seven seconds after the initial door hatch gave way, the plane slammed into the trees of Ermenonville Forest, a state-owned forest at Bosquet de Dammartin in the commune of Fontaine-Chaalis, Oise. At the point of impact, the aircraft was travelling at a speed of approximately 430 knots (490 mph; 800 km/h) at a slight left turn, fast enough to disintegrate the plane into thousands of pieces. The wreckage was so fragmented that it was difficult to determine whether any parts of the aircraft were missing before it crashed. Post-crash fires were small because there were few large pieces of the aircraft left intact to burn. Of the 346 passengers and crew on board, only 40 bodies were visually identifiable with rescue teams recovering some 20,000 body fragments in all. Nine passengers were never identified.

Passengers

167 passengers flew on the Istanbul to Paris leg, and 50 of them disembarked in Paris. 216 new passengers, many of whom were supposed to fly on Air France, BEA, Pan Am, or TWA, boarded TK 981 in Paris, resulting in a 30 minute departure delay. Some passengers cancelled their tickets because of delays or a lack of seats.

The majority of the passengers were British, including members of an amateur rugby team from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, who were returning from a Five Nations match between France and England. Also on board were John Cooper, who won silver medals in men's 400 metres hurdles and the 4 × 400 metres relay at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and Jim Conway, general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union.

Other passengers on board included Wayne Ayres Wilcox, a cultural attaché of the Embassy of the United States in London, his wife Ouida Rae (Neill) Wilcox, and two of his four children; 48 Japanese university graduates touring Europe. and recently married Georgina Forester, a model who was the daughter of John Youens, the then-Chaplain-General of the British Army.

Investigation

The French Minister of Transport appointed a commission of inquiry by the Arrêté 4 March 1974, and included Americans because the aircraft was manufactured by an American company. There were many passengers on board from Japan and the United Kingdom, so observers from those countries followed the investigation closely.

Lloyd's of London insurance syndicate, which covered Douglas Aircraft, retained Failure Analysis Associates (now Exponent, Inc.) to also investigate the accident. In the company's investigation, it was noted that during a stop in Turkey, the ground crews filed the pins down to less than a quarter of an inch (6.4 millimetres), when they experienced difficulty closing the door. Subsequent investigative tests proved the door yielded to approximately 15 psi (100 kPa) of pressure, in contrast to the 300 psi (2,100 kPa) that it had been designed to withstand.

Cause

The passenger doors on the DC-10 are plug doors, designed to prevent opening while the aircraft is pressurized, but the cargo hatch is not. Owing to its large radius, the cargo hatch on the DC-10 could not open inside the fuselage without taking up valuable cargo space, so the hatch was designed to open outward, allowing cargo to be stored directly behind it. The outward-opening design would allow the hatch to be blown open by the pressure inside the cargo area if the latch failed during flight. To prevent this, the DC-10 used a latching system that incorporated "over-center latches" – four C-shaped latches mounted on a common torque shaft that were rotated over latching pins ("spools") fixed to the aircraft fuselage. Due to their shape, when the latches were in the proper position, internal pressure on the hatch did not place enough torque to open them l. The latches were engaged by electric actuators, with a hand crank provided as a backup.

To ensure this rotation was complete and the latches were in the proper position, the DC-10 cargo hatch design included a separate locking mechanism that consisted of small locking pins that slid behind flanges on the lock torque tube (which transferred the actuator force to the latch hooks through a linkage). When the locking pins were in place, any rotation of the latches would cause the torque tube flanges to contact the locking pins, making further rotation impossible. The pins were pushed into place by an operating handle on the outside of the hatch. If the latches were not properly closed, the pins would strike the torque tube flanges and the handle would remain open, visually indicating a problem. Additionally, the handle moved a metal plug into a vent cut in the outer hatch panel. If the vent was not plugged, the fuselage would not retain pressure, eliminating any pneumatic force on the hatch. Also, there was an indicator light in the cockpit, controlled by a switch actuated by the locking pin mechanism, that remained lit unless the cargo hatch was correctly latched.

Similarities to American Airlines Flight 96

The cargo door design flaw, and the consequences of a resulting in-flight decompression, had been noted by Convair engineer Dan Applegate in a 1972 memo. The memo was written after American Airlines Flight 96, another DC-10 experienced a rear cargo door failure identical to the one that occurred on Flight 981, also causing an explosive decompression. Fortunately, even though the pilot's ability to control Flight 96 was compromised by some severed underfloor cables in the blown-out section of the plane, they were able to land in Detroit without further injuries. The NTSB's investigation into Flight 96 determined that baggage handlers forced the locking handle closed, and the latches did not engaged fully because of an electrical problem. The incident investigators discovered that the rod connecting the pins to the handle was weak enough that it could be bent with repeated operation and force, allowing the baggage handler to close the handle with his knee even when the pins interfered with the torque tube flanges. The vent plug and cockpit light were operated by the handle or the locking pins, not the latches, so when the handle was stowed, both of these warning devices indicated that the door was properly closed. In the case of Flight 96, the plane was able to make a safe emergency landing because not all of the underfloor cables were severed, thus allowing the pilots limited control. This greatly contrasted with Flight 981, where all of the underfloor cables were severed in the decompression and the pilots lost complete control of the plane.

In the aftermath of Flight 96, the NTSB made several recommendations. Its primary concern was the addition of vents in the rear cabin floor that would ensure that a cargo area decompression would equalise the cabin area, and not place additional load onto the floor. In fact, most of the DC-10 fuselage had vents like these, only those in the rear of the aircraft lacked them. Additionally, the NTSB suggested that upgrades to the locking mechanism and to the latching actuator electrical system be made compulsory. Despite this, the FAA also agreed with McDonnell-Douglas' assessment that additional venting would be too expensive to implement and did not demand that this change be made.

Flight 981, named TC-JAV or "Ship 29", had been ordered from McDonnell-Douglas three months after the service bulletin was issued, and was delivered to Turkish Airlines three months later. Despite this, the changes required by the service bulletin (installation of a support plate for the handle linkage, preventing the bending of the linkage seen in the Flight 96 incident) had not been implemented. Through either oversight or deliberate fraud, the manufacturer construction logs however showed that this work had been carried out. In reality, an improper adjustment had been made to the locking pin and warning light mechanism, causing the locking pin travel to be reduced. This meant that the pins did not extend past the torque tube flanges, allowing the handle to be closed without excessive force (estimated by investigators to be around 50 pounds-force or 220 newtons) despite the improperly engaged latches. These findings concurred with statements made by Mohammed Mahmoudi, the baggage handler who had closed the door on Flight 981; he noted that no particular amount of force was needed to close the locking handle. Changes had also been made to the warning light switch, so that it would turn off the cockpit warning light even if the handle was not fully closed.

After Flight 96, McDonnell-Douglas added a small peephole that allows baggage handlers to visually inspect the pins to confirm they are in the correct position, and information placards to show the correct and incorrect positions of the pins. This modification had been applied to Flight 981's plane, however, Mahmoudi had not been instructed about the purpose of the indicator window; he had been told that as long as the door latch handle stowed correctly and the vent flap closed at the same time, the door was safely latched. Furthermore, the instructions on the plane regarding the indicator window were printed in English and Turkish, but Algerian-born Mahmoudi could read neither.

It was normally the duty of Turkish Airlines flight engineer or chief ground engineer to ensure that all cargo and passenger doors were securely closed before takeoff. In the case of Flight 981 however, the airline did not have a ground engineer on duty at the time of the departure, and the flight engineer for Flight 981 failed to check the door. Although French media outlets called for Mahmoudi to be arrested, the crash investigators stated that it was unrealistic to expect an untrained, low-wage earning baggage handler who could not read the warning sticker to be responsible for the safety of the aircraft.

Aftermath

Issues related to the latch of the DC-10 include human factors, interface design and engineering responsibility. The control cables for the rear control surfaces of the DC-10 were routed under the floor therefore, a failure of the hatch resulting in a collapse of the floor could impair the controls. If the hatch were to fail for any reason, there was a very high probability the plane would be lost. To make matters worse, Douglas chose a new type of latch to seal the cargo hatch. This possibility of a catastrophic failure as a result of this overall design was first discovered in 1969, and actually occurred in 1970 in a ground test. Although Convair, who had been sub-contracted to manufacture the door, informed McDonnell Douglas of the potential problem, Douglas ignored these concerns, because rectification of what Douglas considered to be a small problem with a low probability of occurrence would have seriously disrupted the delivery schedule of the aircraft, and caused Douglas to lose sales. Dan Applegate was Director of Product Engineering at Convair at the time.

After the crash of Flight 981, the latching system was completely redesigned to prevent them from moving into the wrong position. The locking system was mechanically upgraded to prevent the handle from being forced closed without the pins in place, and the vent door was altered to be operated by the pins, thereby indicating when the pins, rather than the handle, were in the locked position. Additionally, the FAA ordered further changes to all aircraft with outward-opening doors, including the DC-10, Lockheed L-1011, and Boeing 747, requiring vents be cut into the cabin floor to allow pressures to equalise in the event of a blown-out door.

The death toll of 346 exceeded that of any previous aviation incident. Three years later, on 27 March 1977, 583 people perished in the collision of two Boeing 747s in the Canary Islands. Flight 981 remained the deadliest accident resulting from hull loss involving a single aircraft, until 12 August 1985, when 520 were killed in the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, and the deadliest aviation accident with no survivors until the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision of 12 November 1996 which killed 349 people. As of 20 December 2016, Flight 981 is still the deadliest single-plane accident with no survivors. (4 survived JAL 123, as did 61 from Pan Am 1736 on Tenerife.)

The name given to the crashed DC-10, Ankara, is still used on an Airbus A340-300 (TC-JDL, MSN: 57) in Star Alliance livery, later given to a Boeing 777-300ER (TC-JJP, MSN: 40797). Turkish Airlines still flies to London, but the route is now non-stop, and flown with either an Airbus A330 or the Boeing 737.

Similar accidents

An outward-opening cargo hatch is inherently less resistant to blowing open than an inward-opening one, also called a plug door. In flight, the air pressure inside the aircraft is greater than that outside, and pushes outward on the hatch. In the case of a plug door, this actually seals the door more tightly. An outward-opening hatch, however, relies entirely upon its latch to prevent it from opening in flight. This makes it particularly important that the locking mechanisms be secure. Aircraft other than DC-10s have also experienced catastrophic failures of hatches. The Boeing 747 has experienced several such incidents, the most noteworthy of which occurred on United Airlines Flight 811 in February 1989. On Flight 811, the cargo hatch failed, causing a section of the fuselage to fail, resulting in the deaths of nine passengers, who were blown out of the aircraft.

The NTSB's recommendations following the earlier Flight 96 incident, which were intended to decrease the possibility of another hatch failure, were not implemented by any airline. As a result, the NTSB now communicates directly with the FAA regarding the former's recommendations for safety improvements, and the FAA may issue Airworthiness Directives based on those recommendations. However, the FAA is not obligated to act on NTSB recommendations.

Dramatization

The crash was featured in Season 5 of the Canadian made, internationally distributed documentary series Mayday, on the episode "Behind Closed Doors", which also covers the similar crash of American Airlines Flight 96.

References

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 Wikipedia